


Kriegspiel

by Azia



Series: ∞ [1]
Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: (Thanks Korekiyo), Additional Warnings May Apply, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Manipulation, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-01-30 14:00:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 49,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12654963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azia/pseuds/Azia
Summary: In the end, Shuichi was more:Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.At the beginning, Kokichi was more:I’m a movement by myself, but I’m a force when we’re together.x. checkmate:[from persian, “the king is helpless”] a game position in which a player’s king is in check (threatened with capture) and there is no way to remove the threat. checkmating the opponent wins the game.





	1. Opening

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [His Mouth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11060496) by [RandomGuineaPig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomGuineaPig/pseuds/RandomGuineaPig). 



> this was originally just going to be called _cake._ and was literally going to just be about eating cake (because that scene never happens in _his mouth_ ), but then i found out about an interesting [mistranslation](http://oumakokichi.tumblr.com/post/158329834215/ndrv3-transcripts-once-ive-fallen-in-love-with) and a few theories and got in my feelings, and this happened. ♡
> 
> so:  
> \- this takes place directly after _his mouth_ (aka i will be treating that fic as a backstory to this one, if that makes sense).  
>  \- even though _his mouth_ is a non-despair au, _kriegspiel_ will take place in the killing game.  
>  \- i tried my best to gather the honorifics that the characters used for each other (and some of iruma's nicknames) since i've mainly seen the Localization™.  
> \- please try to imagine an expanded timeline for the fic (i.e. it takes places over several months).  
> \- warning: i know nothing about chess.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> → love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.
>
>> 1\. opening: _the beginning phrase of the game, roughly the first dozen moves, but it can extend much farther. in the opening, players set up their pawn structures, develop their pieces, and usually castle._   
> 

> i. j’adoube: _[from french, “i adjust”] a player says j’adoube as the international signal that he intends to adjust the position of a piece on the board without being subject to the touched piece rule._

“Ah, Tojo-san.” Shuichi murmured the words with one of his typical uneasy smiles. The smaller variety when his lips parted just enough to show his pearly row of upper teeth, the one that caught Kokichi’s attention in the first place.

Just as predicted, Kirumi was in the midst of icing the cake that they had momentarily forgotten about. Ah, no. Not quite. As she took a step away from the counter, they could see that she had already finished icing it – _and_ she had added another layer _and_ laid fresh, sliced strawberries across both layers _and_ garnished it with chocolate shavings. “Ah, Tojo-san…” Shuichi’s smile grew just a little more uneasy. “We’re really sorry. We completely forgot about the cake.”

With a wave of the gloved hand, she expectedly brushed it off. “It was nothing. I hope that you two will be satisfied with the fact that I took some creative liberties with the cake. Since sponge cakes are typically more enjoyable with more than one layer, I added another, alongside some strawberries—though it is fruitless to attempt to add a fresh fruit to such an already unhealthy dessert…” She sighed softly as she began to clean the counter with a nearby rag, but the sound didn’t have a hint of exasperation in it. Shuichi couldn’t spot any messes that she had made herself; just the frosting that he remembered dripping off of the spoon that he had used to mix the batter before he licked it and thus commenced _other_ activities with Kokichi. “And I noticed that you two went against the recipe I had supplied and added chocolate chips and pudding to the batter, so I did the same with the second layer.” She nodded and folded her hands together. Always curt, always elegant. “Shall I set the table and brew some tea to go along with your cake?”

“N-No. You already did enough with giving us the recipe and finishing it, really.” Shuichi made a point by getting two plates, two forks, and a knife himself. “Thank you so much, Tojo-san.”

“It was nothing,” she said again breezily. She nodded before leaving the kitchen (albeit obviously reluctantly; it must’ve killed her to not set up the table and serve drinks).

“Let’s eat this in the Game Room,” Kokichi piped up. He had been considerably quiet during the conversation with Kirumi, which Shuichi decided not to question. The shorter boy had already been quieter earlier throughout the aftercare that he had provided him of washing the fluids off his body and quick reassuring statements before they left his room.

“Why the Game Room?” Shuichi asked, but he was already carving two moderate slices of cake – trying his best to not get icing or chocolate all over the plates and Kirumi’s just-cleaned counter – and following behind Kokichi. Kokichi placed his hands behind his head as he led the way to the Game Room. They passed by Kirumi, sweeping the hall, and Shuichi made sure to thank her again. Shuichi didn’t get an answer to his question until Kokichi closed the door behind them with his heel.

He beamed. “Because I want to be alone with my beloved Saihara-chan!”

“Oh, really?” Shuichi set the plates down on the table in the corner of the room and even had the courtesy to pull out one of the black folding chairs on the opposite side for Kokichi. Kokichi let out a loud (and unnecessary) breath as he plopped down.

“Hmmm… No, actually. That was a lie! The Ultimate Supreme Leader can’t eat in public spaces. What if someone comes around and tries to poison my food? Speaking of which,” he took his fork and dug into his own slice of cake with it before holding it up to Shuichi’s mouth. “Test this for poison for me!”

“A-Ah, um, I’m pretty sure that’s not poisoned since you watched me make it—”

“But Tojo-chan added another layer and she could’ve done whatever she wanted to it.” Kokichi pouted. “If the Ultimate Supreme Leader dies, then my entire organization will fall apart and poor Saihara-chan will be left all alone with no friends in this Academy! Isn’t that so sad?” Kokichi’s eyes were already watering up with crocodile tears. “Sai~ha~ra-chan, _please_ ,” he whined. He sounded like a toddler that wasn’t getting their way. Shuichi felt like he had no choice but to relent.

“Fine, I’ll do it. Just don’t cry, Ouma-kun.” Instantaneously, his partner’s tears dried up and his beaming smile painted his face once more. The wider variety when his lips parted just too much to show the gums above his upper teeth, the one that Shuichi was sure was too cheesy to be genuine but he loved it nonetheless. Kokichi was already pressing the cake against his lips. “I should’ve asked earlier, but are you tired or feeling any pain?” He opened his mouth around the cake. Kokichi had taken a part of the upper layer that Kirumi had made, and it was perfectly moist and fluffy and soft and light and spongy. The layer that they made (or, more accurately, that _Shuichi_ had made while Kokichi unhelpfully watched) was definitely going to pale in comparison. “Wait, there’s still some frosting left…” Shuichi lightly held Kokichi’s wrist in place as he wrapped his lips around the root of the fork and slowly dragged his tongue across its tines to get the remaining white frosting he had initially missed.

Kokichi dropped the fork. It was Shuichi’s turn to smile. The medium-sized variety when his lips parted just barely but one side curled slightly to give a gimmick of a smirk (it couldn’t be called a “smirk” because Saihara Shuichi _didn’t smirk_ , it was against his nature – Kokichi had studied that face enough to know), the one that Kokichi only saw occasionally so it was even more breathtaking and— _dammit_ —this stupid detective had him spun around like silk around his stupid fingers and melted like putty in his stupid palms.

“Saihara-chan is acting weird, so Tojo-chan must’ve _definitely_ poisoned the cake.” Kokichi forced some tears to geyser out. “Oh, why?!” He made his voice as dramatic as possible as he turned his head toward the ceiling. “Not my beloved Saihara-chan! It was supposed to be for me, I should’ve eaten it!” He was expecting some sputtering and a panicked request to stop crying but instead he received a foot slowly stroking up the side of his leg and a quiet chuckle. The geyser plugged up immediately. Shuichi scooped up a copious amount of frosting from his own slice of cake with his finger and made a display of licking it off. _Dammit_. This was what got them in this mess in the first place with the cake batter and the spoon. And Kokichi was too distracted to shuffle through the files of his memory bank to pinpoint the exact moments he had slipped up and the detective managed to catch it.

The present time held the obvious answer: he stared at his mouth too much. But he couldn’t help it. It was shyly smiling at him _right now_ , where else was there to look? If God literally came down from the Heavens, would you turn away?

“I can promise you that it’s not poisoned. See?” Shuichi dug into the upper layer of his own slice and presented it to Kokichi. The juxtaposition of his childish frown and hazy gaze did not go amiss.

“It would be better if Saihara-chan ate this too just in case it’s a slow-acting poison or only my slice has it.”

“How could only your slice have it? Do you think that Tojo-san is clever enough to correctly guess which part of the cake I would give to you and administer poison in that exact location only?” His fork paused right before it reached his lips. Kokichi suppressed a wince and a whine. “Ah, and you didn’t answer my question from earlier. How are you feeling?” The toe of his shoe was pressing slow circles into Kokichi’s ankle. _How was he feeling?_ Based off the look in Shuichi’s eyes, he knew _exactly_ how he felt.

“I… feel…” Shuichi finally ate the bite of cake. He even raised an eyebrow as his lips slid over it. “Ama~zing!” From the way that Shuichi was licking the remnants of frosting from the tines of his fork to the way that his foot was slowing stroking up his shin – he was doing the exact opposite of “amazing.” “I’m not even tired!” The slight darkness pooling underneath his eyes begged to differ. “And I’m not in any pain either!” His joints still ached from the position that Shuichi had him sandwiched in less than an hour ago, and sitting down gave a feeling that he had quickly shoved down in the recesses of his mind – and that only covered the evident physical pain.

Shuichi was already dividing out another bit of cake. God, couldn’t he let Kokichi catch his breath first? Just the back-to-back sight of his pink tongue was overwhelming. That same tantalizing tongue had literally thoroughly explored every nook and cranny of his own month less than an hour ago; shouldn’t he have gotten over this fluttery feeling by now? Yes. Then why was he seriously considering going to Angie to see if he could have a nice long confession session to maybe see if her God could either permanently turn him into a fork or make him suffer more by striking even more slips of boldness into Shuichi’s demeanor.

A new benefit of the situation that Kokichi had been granted now was the right to kiss Shuichi whenever he wanted with not a repercussion or worry. He had to get to his feet in order to lean over the table properly – _hopefully Shuichi would resume their one-sided game of footsies when he sat back down_ – and finally, finally kissed those lips that had haunted his dreams the moment he first laid eyes on them. In seconds, their tongues were already pressing against each other and only Shuichi could make the secondhand aftertaste of cake taste so sweet.

Kokichi didn’t want to pull back for air. He just wanted to absolutely suffocate himself in the essence that was Saihara Shuichi. But that was an unacceptable thing and Shuichi would probably get mad or sad or some type of combination of the two if that happened or if he even admitted it, so he sugarcoated the thought: “Aah, I wish Saihara-chan would become my oxygen so I wouldn’t have to breathe the same dirty air as everyone else here ever again.”

“O-Oum—?”

“Just kidding~! What kind of silly thought is that? Human beings can’t be converted into oxygen, and you would be a horrible choice anyway. You smell and taste horrible.”

“If I smell and taste horrible, then you must too. We used the same soap and ate the same cake.”

“Yeah, but I have contracted the special pheromones that Shirogane-chan has, so I can automatically repel any offensive odors that come my way. They should bottle my scent up and sell it in spray cans and then we can globally market off of housewives with stinky kids and donate the profits to the organization.”

“Sounds like a plan,” was all that Shuichi said and that somehow couldn’t have been more perfect of a response. Maybe it was less so of the words themselves and more so how they were said. It was something about the slight ragged breath and the magnetizing lips that huffed them out. They kissed again, both reaching toward the other at the same time, but it was forced to be cut chaste. The sound of the door handle turning made Kokichi startle right back in his seat and Shuichi’s head crane toward the door.

“Geez,” Kokichi sighed, “could you be any more obvious?” Shuichi flashed him an apologetic look. Kokichi straightened up and plastered on the grin that came with his typical mask. “Akamatsu-chan, how did you find our top secret hiding meeting place? Now we have to exterminate you for possibly eavesdropping on super-secret organization intel.”

Kaede immediately brought her hands up in defense. “Whoa, I definitely was _not_ eavesdropping! Geez.” She rubbed at her forehead. “I asked Tojo-san where Saihara-kun was and she said she saw you two heading this way. I hope you don’t mind me butting in.” Yes, Kokichi minded a lot, but of course Shuichi would say it wasn’t a problem and pull out the chair beside him for her. “She told me that you two baked a cake too. Is this it?”

“Yes!” Kokichi was quick to top off his exclamation with a laugh. “I baked it all by myself too! All Saihara-chan did was watch. It was sooo much work and he only laughed at my pain when my hands were cramping from all the stirring I did.”

“T-That’s not true—at all.”

“I could’ve guessed that.” Kaede chuckled. “It looks pretty good though, and I bet it tastes even better! You two did a great job.” Kokichi put on an exaggerated pout.

“Why’d you say ‘you two’ when I just told you that I was the one who made the cake?” Kokichi willed up some tears. “My beloved Akamatsu-chan doesn’t care about me!”

“Oh, stop it, Ouma-kun.” Kaede’s eyes searched around the room. “Is there a reason why you’re eating in here?” Shuichi’s eyes automatically turned to Kokichi. Was this some sort of silent permission to drum up any answer he wanted? How rare!

Kokichi jumped in before the pause could become too long. “Didn’t you hear me earlier? I said we’re having a top secret meeting.”

Kaede’s nose crinkled. “While eating cake?”

“Sugar is nothing but good for the brain. It helps it come up with the best ideas and completely relaxes the body. Ask Iruma-chan, she told me earlier.” Kaede didn’t seem to like that. She let out a groan and thumped her head against the table.

“Ugh, I was trying to talk to her earlier, but she’s absolutely _exhausting_. I’ll have to try harder next time. That’s why I was looking for you actually, Saihara-kun, to see if you could cheer me up.”

“O-Oh, well… I can… try?”

Kaede sat up with a smile. “Good! Ooh, we could play a game. I mean, we _are_ in the Game Room. Let’s see…” She stood up and began to survey the room. Shuichi and Kokichi instinctively locked eyes with one another. Shuichi was definitely conveying apologies over a situation that he had no control over and Kokichi blinked in return. “Hey, look, there’s a chessboard here.” Kaede pulled out a board from the shelf that she had been rummaging through behind Kokichi. “I used to play a little when I was younger, so I kinda remember the basics. What about you guys?”

“I know the basics too,” Shuichi said. “We can play if you want?”

“I thought you came here to cheer up, Akamatsu-chan.” Kokichi frowned. “Why do you want to play such a boring, depressing game?”

“You… have a point.” Kaede still took a seat next to Kokichi and set up the board though. The pieces were (unsurprisingly) Monokuma and Monokubs-themed. The king was a Monokuma head sporting a too-large crown, the queen looked suspiciously like a crowned Monophanie, the rook looked like some type of bunny that Kokichi probably should’ve known the name of, the bishop resembled Monosuke, the knight Monotaro, and the pawn was Monodam. “Would you two rather play a board game or a video game or something?”

“No, chess is fine. And you already set up all the pieces, so…” Shuichi shrugged. He traced his finger over the points of the extravagant crown that adorned the king Monokuma’s head. “Would you like to play next, Ouma-kun?”

“I would rather play never.”

“Does that mean that… you want to play now?” Kokichi shrugged. How irritatingly neutral of an answer. Shuichi nonetheless turned the board around so that it faced Kaede and Kokichi properly. “Do you know how to play?”

“I’ve never even seen a chessboard before in my life!” He laughed as Kaede was already moving one of the pieces. Her movements were slow and thoughtful in the way that a beginner was. Shuichi was sure he played the same way. Kokichi’s laugh cut short as he only glanced down at the board before moving a piece. Did he not care about where his piece was? Kaede moved again. Kokichi moved again. “Check~mate!”

“W-What?” Kaede’s eyes widened as she looked over the board. “B-But how? How’d you win in only two moves?!”

“You moved your pawn here, so I moved my pawn there, then you moved your other pawn here, so you left your king open.” His explanation was unhelpful, but Shuichi saw what happened. “Foo~l’s mate,” he singsonged. “And I thought that I would be facing off against the great grandmaster of chess, Akamatsu-chan, for hours, but _nope_!” He feigned a loud yawn.

“Can I try?” Shuichi asked. Kokichi opened one eye in the midst of his yawn.

“Are you going to be easy like Akamatsu-chan too?” Shuichi turned the board over and moved the pieces back in place.

“I’ll try not to be.” Shuichi trusted his skills enough to at least not leave his king unprotected.

Chess is a sport. Everyone knew that.

It was only natural for a detective’s mind to think a minimum of three to four steps ahead about everything, chess included. A person with a beginner’s skillset could at least do as much (and keep their king protected). Kokichi once again adopted his uncharacteristic quiet demeanor once the game commenced. Shuichi managed to make a longer game than Kaede could: a measly ten moves.

“Ah, Akamatsu-chan and Saihara-chan are hopeless.” Kokichi stretched his arms behind his head and leaned back in his seat. “Even the Ultimate Detective couldn’t stand a chance.” He clicked his tongue and shook his head in mock disappointment. “What a shame.”

“Hey, I think I at least deserve a rematch,” Kaede said. She was already setting up the board. It didn’t look like she was taking no for an answer. They managed to go on for ten moves too before Kokichi won. Kaede didn’t seem upset though. Quite the opposite really. “Wow, Ouma-kun, I wasn’t expecting for you to be so good at chess. Do you play a lot?”

“Didn’t I say that I’ve never even seen a chessboard before?” His smile waxed fraudster. “I prayed to Angie-chan’s God before each game and He blessed me with that divine luck she always talks about.”

“I find that _very_ hard to belie—ah, Tojo-san, perfect timing!” Kirumi set her broom aside by the arcade machine before she walked over to the group.

“Perfecting timing? I only came to collect Ouma-kun and Saihara-kun’s dishes.” Shuichi felt himself grimace when he looked down at the plates. There was only a single bite taken out of Ouma’s slice of cake and a couple out of his – and Saihara was technically the only one that had eaten too.

“Before you do that, do you think you could play a quick game of chess against Ouma-kun? That is, if you know how to play.” Kirumi looked down at the board, hand on her chin, before she nodded.

“I don’t see why not,” she murmured as she took the seat next to Shuichi. “I have some knowledge in chess, but I would not classify myself as an expert.”

“That’s fine!” Kaede propped her hands underneath her chin so she could watch the game comfortably. “It’s just that Saihara-kun lost one game against him and I lost one and a half, so I’m wondering if you could beat him.”

“ _Half_ a game?” Kokichi laughed. He straightened up in his seat again once Kirumi reset the board. “Are you still mad at the fact that you made such a simpleminded mistake?”

“A little, but,” Kaede slammed her fist against the table and Kirumi had to right the chess pieces again (at lightning speed, Shuichi noted), “Tojo-san _will_ beat you!”

“We’ll see.” Once again, silence blanketed on the room as the match between Kirumi and Kokichi started. Kirumi was a faster player than Kaede and Shuichi at least, but her moves were not as nonchalant and aloof as Kokichi’s. Hers were methodical though. But she never seemed to get an edge on Kokichi. Their game was constructed of only ten moves. “Even Tojo-chan has been defeated! How humiliating for the confident Akamatsu-chan.”

“N-No!” Kaede shot up from her seat. “You beat Tojo-san in _ten_ moves? You’ve got to be cheating!”

Kokichi grinned – the type that was so wide, his eyes were forced to close and his cheeks tinged red from all the effort he put into it. “Maybe you’re all losing on purpose to make me feel better. How cruel would that be?”

“No, that is not the case.” Kirumi quickly reset the pieces again. “The average game of chess lasts for about forty moves. I play an average of twenty to thirty moves and win three out of four of my games…” She briefly hummed to herself. “Would you like a rematch, Ouma-kun?” Perhaps it was just her way of saying that she wanted to play again.

“Sure! I could never pass up the opportunity to humiliate Akamatsu-chan again.”

“H-Hey! She’ll get you this time, I’m sure of it!”

⁂

“Check~mate!”

Collective groans and yells sounded throughout the room:

“Oh, c’mon!”

“It’s impossible to get more than ten moves on him!”

“He’s got to be cheating!”

“God is truly on his side today. How divine!”

It had turned into some type of domino effect: Kaede had grabbed Kirumi, then she grabbed Kiibo because “there was no way Kokichi could win against a robot” – but that was proven wrong. Then one by one, more people poured in – Rantaro, Ryouma, Tsumugi, Korekiyo, Maki, and now the recent loser Kaito – and they all met the same fate. Even the spectators – Angie, Miu, Gonta (actually, maybe less so Gonta), Tenko, and Himiko – were catching the growing sense of exasperation. According to Shuichi’s mental statistics, no one had managed to reach more than ten moves against Kokichi, Kokichi took an average of two to three seconds before making a move, his longest move took five seconds – but it was during his last move against Kaito so Shuichi guessed that he was teasing the astronaut into thinking that he had won, and he was always deafly silent when he played. The spell was only disrupted once he said “checkmate.”

Kaito was still slamming his hand against the table and Miu seemed to find the entire ordeal extra hilarious. “What are ya, the ‘supreme’ leader of an ultra-virgin squad of chess playing geeks?” She cackled.

Kokichi was quick to say: “Yup! _Especially_ the ‘virgin’ bit.” Shuichi tried not to lower his eyes at that. “Only the purest players blessed personally by Angie-chan’s God can enroll into my organization.” With a loud sigh, Kokichi pushed his chair back. “Welp, I’m bored.”

“W-Wait,” Kaito stammered. “One more game!” Kokichi turned his nose up at him.

“Nope. I’m bored. And it’s nighttime—I have a bedtime.” Kokichi tapped the back of Shuichi’s seat. When more and more people started gathering into the Game Room, Shuichi kept giving up his seat for them. But once he had the seat next to Kokichi and tried to give it up when Tsumugi entered, Kokichi had wrapped his ankle over his underneath the table, locking him in place, all while never losing concentration in his match against Ryouma. “Saihara-chan!” Kokichi even clapped his hands twice. “Escort me to my room just in case one of these losers gets upset and attempt to assassinate me on my way to the dorms.”

“Um…” Shuichi shuffled his seat back. “S-Sure thing.” Shuichi made sure to say goodnight to everyone before he left the room. He trailed after Kokichi again. (He forgot the dishes that they had attempted to eat cake on in the Game Room, he had already accidentally discarded the mental note that he was going to clean them up instead of leaving it to Kirumi; he still felt a lingering sense of surprise that Maki had actually finished the slices when he offered them to her.)

Kokichi broke Shuichi out of his commonplace thoughts with the grab of the hand and a sudden steer away from the dormitory and to the courtyard. Shuichi recalled Gonta once murmuring to himself about the stars looking unfamiliar than what he was used to on either their second or third night inside of the Academy. Shuichi wasn’t too skilled on astronomy. Maybe he could ask Kaito to inform him tomorrow. The constellations, even if their lines were covenanted with false celestial bodies, managed to twinkle and wink back with the promise that they could be viewed without the veil of the Academy’s glass dome. And that was at least _something_ for Shuichi.

“So,” Shuichi started, but when he turned to Kokichi he caught just the slightest glimpse of unconformity across his face. It was nearly hidden away, the shorter boy’s head was turned away from Shuichi. It was the definition of a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, but Shuichi still managed to catch it. And it couldn’t have been him that caused it (at least, he hoped not). Kokichi was the one that had initiated the handholding in the first place, and he was even interlocking their fingers together. When Kokichi faced him, the streak of discomfort was completely melted away and he wore the same bored expression he had before they left the Game Room.

“So what?” Perhaps it wasn’t wise to ask? What they had between them was still in its embryonic stage. It was so fresh and novel, and even though Shuichi managed to take on the encourager role during their first time together, it was only temporary. He was still ultimately weaker than him, than _everyone_ in the Academy.

“N-Nothing important. Just the, um, the stars. I just remembered that Gonta-kun said they looked strange a couple of weeks ago.” Kokichi rolled his eyes upward. They were halfway across the courtyard and Kokichi decided to add a little swing to their arms.

“Hm… They look the same as they do from the rooftop of my secret organization’s HQ.”

“Really? And where would that be?”

“In the secret room at the top of Towa Tower. Oopsie! That was top secret info. Looks like I gotta take you out so you don’t leak it~.”

> ii. kriegspiel: _[from german, “war game”] kriegspiel is a chess variant played by two opponents who can only see their own board and one monitoring umpire who makes the moves of both players on a neutral board. it requires three chess sets and boards. the players make their moves based on limited information from the umpire. the players are separated by dividers._

It was purely psychological response that Shuichi’s body flinched when his door opened. Was someone coming to kill him too? If Kaede could be a killer, then _anybody_ could be a killer.

A whisper of “Saihara-chan” cut through the darkness and Shuichi flinched again – reasons emotional instead of psychological. Shuichi allowed his blanket to slip from his grasp as the slight light from the dormitory crept into his room. Kokichi carefully closed the door behind him and walked toward the bed. The mattress creaked and sunk down slightly with his added weight.

Shuichi had gone to Kaede’s lab due to Kaito’s recommendation, and positive and negative feelings intermixed together after he traced his finger across her piano (or the piano that was _supposed_ to be hers – she never got around to playing it to his knowledge). He allowed himself to become tangled up in the web of his thoughts. So many things had been buzzing through his mind, were _still_ going through his mind, and they were knotted up with an odd sense of grief and betrayal and a scorching sensation of self-blame.

“How…” Shuichi cleared his throat. He vaguely heard the nighttime announcement about two or three hours ago, so it must’ve been pretty late. And despite all the talking he was forced to do during the class trial against Kaede, his throat still managed to close up from disuse fairly quickly. Maybe it was because he had tried his best to strain his urge to cry as much as possible. The tears seeped out though. Hopefully Kokichi’s eyes wouldn’t adjust to the darkness to see the stained pillowcases. “How’d you get in here?” A futile question. Shuichi already good and well knew the answer. He couldn’t help but be anything but absentminded though.

“I have a lock pick.” Kokichi had broken into his room multiple times before. Yes… Shuichi was very much aware of Kokichi’s skills.

 _Extremely_ aware.

Before Rantaro’s murder, he recalled seeing him picking the lock on Rantaro’s door from the darkened corner of the dormitory’s entrance. Shuichi’s heart nearly burst outside of his chest during the trial. The realization about Kaede added on with what he had seen with Kokichi was too much to take. The possibility of losing both a friend _and_ a lover in one fell swoop dumped so much pressure on his mind that he only managed to repress his anxious trembles until he reached Kaede’s Research Lab.

_What if Kokichi was the one who killed Rantaro?_

_What if Kaede was the one who killed Rantaro?_

_Kaede… really… killed Rantaro…_

_What… if… Kokichi… helped her?_

Those thoughts still swirled through his mind, though they were flying around at a lesser speed now that he had been lying in bed, trying to calm his heart, for the past few hours. And the question _Why?_ had been sitting on the tip of Shuichi’s tongue the moment he tucked himself further into the darkness once he saw Kokichi successfully break into Rantaro’s room. It managed to saturate not only his tongue but his mind throughout the trial. _Why did you break into Rantaro’s room before he was found dead?_ If it weren’t for Kaede herself, then Shuichi probably would’ve never found the courage to incriminate her. He couldn’t do it to Kokichi – not in front of an audience at least…

But maybe being in private could help some?

Shuichi could feel fingers just barely dancing across his back through the blanket. Comfort probably didn’t come easy to Kokichi. Shuichi nestled his face closer into his pillow.

⁂

The process of grieving was slow and strenuous. Hushed promises of escaping and reassurance replayed in Shuichi’s mind for days, even after he made the (monumental to him at least) decision to permanently discard his hat. A positive was the compliments from his fellow entrapped colleagues and Kokichi carding his fingers through his hair when they were alone.

But even though Akamatsu Kaede managed to turn into an unpleasant hum that lingered in the back of his mind, Amami Rantaro couldn’t be silenced.

So a week after the first class trial, Shuichi decided to at least attempt to settle it.

“Ouma-kun,” Shuichi called out. He finally managed to find the shorter boy in the courtyard. “Ah, sorry. Did I wake you up?”

“Maaaybe.” Today the sun managed to penetrate the dome hanging above their heads and kissed everything with its warmth. Kokichi was lounging in a patch of sunlight and taking an afternoon nap like a cat. “I wasn’t even asleep. I was only having a contest with myself to see how long I can blink for.” The drowsiness that stuck to the corners around Kokichi’s eyes begged to differ, but Shuichi didn’t question it.

“Can we play a game?” Kokichi immediately closed his eyes at that.

“You want to play _that_ boring game again? No thanks. I’m taking a nap.”

“Not exactly chess, but… I have an idea.” Shuichi leaned against the wall behind him. How could he phrase this without triggering any red flags? “I thought of something, um, _fun_ that I think you might like. We play a game—any game of your choice—and whoever wins gets to ask the loser a question and the loser has to answer with _complete_ honesty.” Kokichi’s eyes shot open and he glanced up at the sky, not at Shuichi, but he still felt the burn from his gaze. _What happened to not raising any flags?_ Shuichi internally sighed.

“Is Saihara-chan bored?”

“Um, a little, yeah.”

“Hm…” Kokichi tapped his finger against his chin. Shuichi had a feeling that his companion’s mind was already made up though. “I guess we can play that boring game again.”

“I-I’ll go get the board.” Once his back was turned, Shuichi allowed himself to clutch at his chest.

Chess is a science. Some people knew that.

It seemed like a simple decision on the outside. _Of course_ Kokichi would chose to pick chess given the circumstances. Kokichi literally beat everyone in the Academy at the game in less than ten moves. There was absolutely no way that Shuichi would win against him. So, whatever potential question that Shuichi had for Kokichi, Kokichi didn’t want to hear it. It was plain to see in his choice to play a game that he was guaranteed to win. Nonetheless, Shuichi went to the Game Room to collect the board. The memory of everyone gathering to watch Kokichi beat everyone flooded into his mind. It was one of the last few moments when everyone had decided not to kill, to work together, to not turn against each other.

It took the same amount of time for Shuichi to set up the board to also meet a crushing defeat in the match. Kokichi didn’t even say his trademark singsong “checkmate.” He stared down at the board for only a moment before he looked up at Shuichi, wide smile in place, and asked, “Do you like me?”

“H-Huh?”

“Do you like me, Sai~ha~ra-chan? That’s my question. And as per your rules, you can’t lie about it.”

“Of course I like you.” Shuichi managed to muster up a smile at that. “I told you that I loved you a few weeks ago during our, um, our first time together. Remember?”

Kokichi clicked his tongue and shook his head. “No. I’m afraid you’re going to have to jog my memory.” Shuichi pushed out a laugh between his lips.

“Nice try.” He kissed him anyway. It was meant to be quick but Kokichi made sure that their lips smacked loudly when they parted.

 _Why?_ was still squeezing around his heart as he packed the chess pieces back up.

> iii. kotov syndrome: _this phenomenon, described by alexander kotov in his 1971 book_ think like a grandmaster _, can occur when a player does not find a good plan after thinking long and hard on a position. the player, under time pressure, then suddenly decides to make a move that he has hardly thought about at all, and it may not be a good move for that reason._

Another bitter pill of betrayal to swallow. First, Kaede: who he had considered his most trusted companion in the game and still managed to murder right underneath his nose. Second, Kirumi: a mother-like figure to the entire group and Kokichi had taken a particular liking to her too. Looking across the courtroom, Shuichi caught the brief crack in Kokichi’s façade. Pure betrayal. The emotion only stayed on his face for a split second before he secured his mask again once they locked eyes. It was still enough for Shuichi.

And despite the betrayal, Shuichi yelled at the top of his lungs for Kirumi to escape her execution. And as they were forced to watch, Kokichi slipped in from behind Shuichi and just barely grasped at his fingers, and Shuichi made sure to squeeze back.

⁂

In hindsight, Shuichi should’ve held on to Kokichi’s hand after they left the courtroom. He should’ve held him back.

Kokichi and Maki’s expressions were boiling down to something downright terrifying. “The truth is, I found out too about Harukawa-chan’s true identity.” Kokichi even sealed his words with a laugh.

It happened so fast. In a literal split second. Shuichi’s mind foolishly thought that Maki had disappeared, but that obviously was not the case.

It felt like hours. Hours to just simply soak the scene in front of him in: Maki with her hand around Kokichi’s neck. Shuichi was frozen in place. His entire body – heart, mind, and spirit – stopped. Everyone else seemed to be struck with the same affliction, except Kaito. Kaito’s mouth still worked. He yelled at Maki, but didn’t make a move toward her. No one did.

Kokichi kept going. More incriminating words bubbled out of his throat, but was the pain really worth it just to expose the Ultimate Assassin? Maybe to Kokichi. Not to Shuichi.

Shuichi’s systems resumed shifting their gears as Maki released her grip on Kokichi’s neck. He was quick to step in with his arm around Kokichi’s shoulders – damn anyone that questioned or stared at them – and led him to the dorms.

“Can you breathe? Are you okay?”

“N~ope!”

“Don’t lie to me, please!”

“I feel horrible!” Kokichi’s shoulders shook with laughter and threw Shuichi’s arm off. “She managed to cut off my circulation _and_ my windpipe, so it’s totally fine. You’re talking to a ghost right now, Saihara-chan!” Kokichi kept on laughing and laughing and laughing and Shuichi felt himself grow stuck once more. He never even could’ve imagined in his wildest dreams that someone would come after Kokichi – and _in front of everyone_ too.

Shuichi tried to reorganize his thoughts. He had read so many cases and articles and stories about people being strangled, but he had never witnessed it in real life, right in front of him, and with somebody that he had invested so much time and care into too.

Shuichi could at least calm himself down enough to sit Kokichi down on his bed. He took off his scarf and scrutinized his neck. Maki’s fingerprints were reddening against Kokichi’s neck, and the center of each print had the slightest bit of purple-y blueness. Kokichi was still lying up a storm—“We should’ve climbed up Tojo-chan’s spider thread and escaped Hell together! The outside world was just above that well, didn’t you see it? We were meant to all climb the web and escape out there together or die trying!”—and it was making Shuichi panic, but he tried to swallow it down as best as he could.

“H-Hey, Ouma-kun?” Kokichi kept on laughing but he at least he shut up for a moment. This pandemonium of madness was worse than silence. “Let’s, um, play a game? Real quick. To get our minds off of things.” Shuichi bit his lip. “I-I-If you want.” After some meticulous eyeballing, Shuichi decided that Kokichi’s neck and breathing should be fine in a physical sense at least.

“O~kay!”

“R-Really?” Shuichi had literally just said the first thing that came to mind. Playing a game didn’t feel like the most optimal thing to do at the moment.

“Hurry up before I change my mind.” Kokichi flopped back on the bed.

⁂

If Kirumi was still there, Shuichi guessed that she would’ve surely broken up the fight (“fight” implied that it was an equal struggle between two people, when Maki had come out of nowhere and given Kokichi no chance) and attended to Kokichi properly. She probably would’ve done something to properly soothe his neck and would’ve watched over him. All Shuichi could do was make a measly icepack after he collected the chessboard.

When he opened the door to his room, he caught Kokichi wiping his eyes before he snapped up into a sitting position. “Saihara-chan took sooo long. I was about to leave.” He let a false pout take over his features. His scarf was still discarded where Shuichi had left it. The marks on his neck had settled in slightly, but Shuichi would take a few bruises over any possible permanent damage any day.

“Sorry…” He handed Kokichi the makeshift icepack before he sat across from him on the bed.

“Same rules?” Kokichi asked as he settled the pack against his jugular, where Maki’s thumb had dug at and the darkest bruise formed.

“Same… rules?” Shuichi repeated. He figured that he was justified to have his thoughts running all aflutter.

“Silly Saihara-chan!” Kokichi let out another one of his overzealous laughs. It ended in a cough. “The additional rule that you added to the game last time we played. The loser has to answer a question— _honestly_.”

“Oh, uh… Sure.” Shuichi somehow managed to set up the board through his stumbling fingers. The pieces managed to slip through his fingers a couple of times, but he righted them. The task itself was futile in a way though. He was going to lose anyway, so what was the point in trying to make the setup so perfect?

Once they reached the ninth move of the game, Shuichi slowly moved the first piece that his eyes laid on – a pawn. He bowed his head slightly, ready to admit defeat. Nothing. Kokichi hadn’t said “checkmate” the last time, so maybe he didn’t want to say it this time either. There was a tapping sound on the board. Shuichi picked his head up again and saw that Kokichi had moved. Had he actually managed to play a game longer than ten moves against Kokichi? It seemed impossible. No, it must’ve been nigh impossible. Kokichi’s eyes were still trained on the board and he was rolling the baggie of melted ice between his fingers. Shuichi almost forgot to move again. And Kokichi moved back. He won after the fifteenth move.

Chess is an art. Few people knew that.

Shuichi was tempted to ask if Kokichi had been toying with him. But the shorter boy was quicker to speak: “I wonder if everyone would’ve just watched Harukawa-chan strangle me to death.”

“N-No!” Shuichi didn’t even have the words to describe the weight of the unadulterated guilt that was racking his body by the second. It increased by the tenfold from Kokichi’s (attempt at an) seemingly offhand comment. “We were all shocked, but…” Shuichi didn’t even know why he was bothering with some sort of half-assed explanation. “ _No one_ would’ve let it get that far. We were all shocked that she would even do that in the first place, but I can guarantee you that if she had taken it any farther, we would’ve stepped in.”

“Hmm... No, I don’t think so.” Kokichi tucked his arms behind his head with a grin. There was no need for it. They were alone together. Shuichi didn’t need or want the show that Ouma Kokichi felt the need to constantly put on. He just wanted _him_. “I bet that everybody would’ve loved to see it! When I thought about how much you would’ve loved to see it too, it made me so happy to think about.” Shuichi thought back to how fast Kokichi had wiped his eyes when he had returned to the room. He wasn’t one to wipe away his fake tears. They always faded away on their own.

“Is…” Shuichi knew that he was prodding at the careful, cozy bubble of conformity that surrounded their relationship, but he had to ask. “Is that what you want to ask me? Do you want to ask… why didn’t I stop her and… and why I watched her too like everybody else?” His mind kept screeching at him for it. Guilt increased by the hundredfold from the look in Kokichi’s eyes. It was blank. Shuichi felt like he had been sent back to chapter genesis on his book of analysis on Ouma Kokichi. He didn’t completely understand _everything_ about him – and had long forced himself to accept that fact – but he felt like he knew _enough_. But the way that he was looking at him, looking _through_ him, like it was nothing…

“Nope! Why would I want to ask that? I wanted to ask what Saihara-chan’s favorite thing about me is.” Maybe it was definitely what he wanted. Or maybe not. Shuichi wasn’t sure and he didn’t have the strength to deduce.

But maybe his honesty could get through to the other.

“My favorite thing about you is the times when you can’t control your face.” Kokichi raised an eyebrow at least. “Like, how during the trial, when we looked at each other, I could tell for a second that you were feeling the same way I did. And… the looks you give me too. I really like looking at your eyes…” His eyes changed for a split second at that. It was a small, timid emotion that Shuichi couldn’t think of the name for. It was enough for him though.

The air between them still felt too tingly and delicate and tense, and Shuichi’s chest was still too sticky and cobwebbed with guilt and grief. And they were having some sort of silent staring contest. Kokichi probably wanted to “prove” that there were absolutely no cracks in his demeanor, or that his eyes and expressions only held what he wanted them to at all times. Shuichi was the first to blink, but Kokichi was technically the first to lose because his eyes gleamed with something too fragile to name. Shuichi designated the loss as another fact to keep to himself.

(All of his little secrets and worries managed to get exposed eventually one way or another anyways.)


	2. Middlegame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> → sad hours seem long.
>
>> 2\. middlegame: _the part of the game that follows the opening and comes before the endgame, beginning after the pieces are developed in the opening. this is usually roughly between moves twenty through forty._

> iv. zugzwang: _[from german, “compulsion”] a situation in which the obligation to make a move in one’s turn is a serious, often decisive, disadvantage._

Blood contained salt. And so did the nerves of the body. And so did the Kiyomizu Temple’s _Otowa no Taki_ Waterfall from all the promises of purification it received pre-ritual.

Shuichi figured that in the morning everyone was going to visit Maki's Research Lab to officially confirm or dispel Kokichi's claim of her being the Ultimate Assassin. Resting was optimal, but Shuichi couldn’t do it. It must’ve been around midnight, and he was still awake. Not _wide_ awake, just _simply_ awake and not by choice. If anything, he wanted nothing more than to sleep. Shuichi knew there were stages to sleeping, but were there stages to being awake? If so, he figured he was just a level or two above sleep. He was stuck in this midstage, methodically moving his fingers over the marks on Kokichi’s neck.

The first touch was as gingerly as could be. After Shuichi had packed up the chessboard, stowed it away in the corner of his room, and they shed their outer layers of clothing and tucked themselves into Shuichi’s bed, he reached out and just barely ran his fingertip across Kokichi’s neck. The shorter boy had immediately shivered at the touch. “D-Did I hurt y—?” Kokichi had shaken his head. Shuichi continued, at first tracing his fingernails across the darkened marks. Then as his motions grew absentminded he was stroking the pads of his fingers across the other’s neck and underneath his jaw and above his collarbones.

Kokichi was so damn delicate, it scared him. Compared to Shuichi, he was at least thirty pounds lighter and half a foot shorter. Just feeling along his bones served a permanent reminder. How easy would it have been for Maki – for _anyone_ – to wrap their hands around his neck and _snap_? It could’ve been nothing to the right (or the wrong) person; could’ve been like snapping a candy bar in half.

A weepy storm was coming on (or in hindsight, another mislabeled panic attack). The guilt ( _you should’ve done something_ ) and the intrusive thoughts ( _you can’t even protect anyone_ ) were piling on and on. Kokichi’s eyes slowly opened when Shuichi’s hand stopped moving. He had managed to lull the other one to sleep at least twenty or so minutes ago. His eyes dazedly rolled up until they connected with Shuichi’s as if to ask why he stopped.

“I—” Shuichi cleared his throat. “Are you thirsty?” He didn’t wait for Kokichi’s answer. “I’ll go get you some water.” He was already zipping his pants back up. Fingers grasped at the back of his shirt before he could stand. Shuichi looked down at Kokichi. The shorter boy was definitely lingering in the first stage of sleep. A small smile paved its way on his tired face as his fingers slipped away from Shuichi’s shirt just as quickly as he had attached them.

“Hurry back,” he yawned and nestled himself further into the pillow, “Sai…ha…ra-chan…” Shuichi watched him until his eyes reclosed. He slipped his shoes on and closed the door as quietly as he could.

He just needed some alone time to himself. Doing nothing in his room with Kokichi’s presence so close to his and feeling the growing blotchiness on his neck was doing more harm than good. He just needed to at least calm the tremors in his hands down. He wrung them together on his long walk to the kitchen.

But it looked like someone else had already beat him to it. Shuichi raised an eyebrow and lowered his hand from the light switch. Shuichi felt obligated to speak. He hoped that his voice wouldn’t waver. “Hey, Shinguji-kun. It’s, um, it’s a good thing that the kitchen is open even though the dining hall is closed, huh?” Shuichi went to gather two glasses. Korekiyo crossed his arms as he watched him. Shuichi knew good and well that Korekiyo was the type to stare, but the hairs on his arms still stood on end.

“What forces called you to come to the kitchen at such an ungodly hour, Saihara-kun?”

“Just getting water.” Shuichi should’ve been asking Korekiyo that. _He_ was the one who was just standing in the middle of the kitchen. “What about you?”

“The setting of the air conditioning in my room has affixed itself to a temperature that is not to my liking—it is much, _much_ too cold. It completely devastated my urge to slumber. So while I have employed Iruma-san to repair it, I decided to migrate into the kitchen. The temperature is most optimal in here at the moment. Do you not feel the cold nipping at your fingertips?” The temperature in the dormitory didn’t feel cold from what Shuichi remembered of it, and he wasn’t wearing his jacket while Korekiyo was. Was the air conditioning malfunctioning only in Korekiyo’s room? Had he really woken Miu up in the middle of the night to fix it? Why the kitchen? Those were all questions that Shuichi would’ve asked if he were up to it.

But he wasn’t, so he settled with a simple: “I don’t really feel cold,” as he made his way to the refrigerator. Korekiyo laughed. An involuntary shiver went up Shuichi’s spine. Korekiyo’s laugh always reminded him of an animal stalking through dry grass as it stoked out its prey on the prowl. Korekiyo was already a person naturally shrouded in apprehensiveness, right down to the way he laughed and the way his eyes squinted as he watched Shuichi take the pitcher of water from out of the fridge.

“Maybe some things are better left up to speculation,” Korekiyo murmured. “A trait of humanity is to always inquire about matters that are not easily understood.”

“I…” What was he talking about? “Okay…” Korekiyo grew quiet again as Shuichi poured water into the two glasses. God, only Korekiyo could make getting water such an awkward situation.

“Hm, _two_ glasses…” Korekiyo unfolded his arms. “You could have easily obtained two bottles of water from the warehouse. It would have been a less laborious task too.”

Shuichi shrugged. “The water in the warehouse would be room temperature while the water in here is cold.” He put the pitcher back into the fridge. As he picked up the two filled glasses he looked at Korekiyo. Korekiyo looked back – as expected, but he wasn’t saying anything. His eyebrow was raised though in a frozen expression that possessed the spirit of inquiry. _But_ he wasn’t saying anything, and Shuichi didn’t want to talk in the first place, so Shuichi took it as his cue to leave. “Um, I hope that your air conditioning is fixed soon. Goodnight, Shinguji-ku—”

“ _Duàn xiù zhī pǐ_.” Shuichi halted in his tracks. Was that… _Mandarin_? Shuichi took a step back into the kitchen. Korekiyo had his hand against his cheek and the corners of his eyes crinkled. The edges of the zipper line of his mask upturned, giving the illusion of a smile.

“Excuse me?”

“ _Duàn xiù zhī pǐ_ ,” Korekiyo repeated. “It means ‘passion of the cut sleeve’ but it could also be translated as ‘broken sleeve of addiction.’ The term refers to Dong Xian, who was an official in China during the Han Dynasty, and Emperor Ai. You see, they often slept together on the same straw mat, and one afternoon the emperor had awoken before Dong and his sleeve was stuck underneath the other’s head. As to not awaken his lover from his slumber, he decided to cut off his sleeve.” Korekiyo’s finger tapped against his temple. Was he expecting a response?

“Shinguji-kun,” Shuichi sighed, “why are you telling me this?” He wasn’t really in the mood for a history lesson. He was met with another laugh, one that was slightly louder than the one previous.

“Your public display of affection toward Ouma-kun earlier had only been—hm, what do you people call it?—ah, the _icing on the cake_ after Harukawa-san’s attack against him. And your actions now…?” He chuckled to himself. “It is a beautiful thing when speculations are confirmed.”

“I…” Shuichi shook his head. “I just felt like it was my responsibility to help Ouma-kun because no one else had… That’s all.” And Shuichi left it at that.

⁂

Kokichi’s entire body was underneath the covers when Shuichi returned. Maybe he had sunk into a deeper sleep and now Shuichi would be completely alone to his thoughts. Shuichi set the glasses on his nightstand. Kokichi’s blanketed form moved slightly. What was funny about him was that he was as solid as a rock whenever he slept, the exact opposite of how active and energetic he could be when he was awake. He must have woken up again and dragged the covers over his head while Shuichi was gone and might’ve still been awake now.

He shifted again slightly, and Shuichi heard _it_. If it wasn’t completely silent in the room, then he was sure that he would’ve missed it. It was the faintest cry in the world. And Shuichi’s systems panicked again. He had never seen Kokichi cry genuine tears of sadness before (pain, yes – yet there also was that suspicious time when he had seen Kokichi dry his eyes and make an interesting comment before their game of chess earlier). Shuichi did the first thing that came to mind again: he bundled Kokichi up into a hug. But impulsivity usually made way for even more impulsivity, and before he could stop, a broken “I’m sorry” left his lips. Followed by an “I should’ve done something.” He closed his eyes. “I shouldn’t have just watched Harukawa-san, I should’ve done something. A-And, just… just _everything_ , I could’ve done something. With Akamatsu-san, with Hoshi-kun. If I wasn’t trying so hard to catch the Ringleader, then Akamatsu-san wouldn’t have made such a rash decision. If I had just talked to Hoshi-kun more, then maybe I could’ve helped him find a will to live and maybe then he wouldn’t have just let Tojo-san…” _kill him_.

“…Shut up.”

“H-Huh?” Shuichi looked down. Kokichi’s head was firmly glued to his chest.

“I said shut up. Those situations couldn’t have been helped, so what’s the point in tearing yourself up about it? How were you supposed to know what was going to happen? What happened… happened.”

“I—Ouma-kun…” Shuichi tried to move back but Kokichi still held his head down. Shuichi guessed that the smaller boy didn’t want for him to see him when he couldn’t control his face – and that was understandable. “That… sounds like something Momota-kun would say.” Kaito was _extremely_ adamant about moving on and not crying over spilled milk. But it was hard; it was the hardest thing it in the world. Shuichi knew he wasn’t the only one that was hurting and having a difficult time with healing.

Kokichi moved back. He kept his head down. “Don’t tell Saihara-chan this but,” he whispered, “I don’t like it when he cries.”

“Ah, Ouma-kun…” Shuichi let out a small laugh. “I actually went to go get water because I _didn’t_ want to cry in front of you.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hands. “I guess that didn’t exactly work out. Hearing you cry just, sort of…” He tried to shrug it off.

“Ugggh.” Kokichi picked his head up. He looked like he was back to normal. There wasn’t even a red ring around his eyes or nose or anything. “All this talking about crying is making me sooo depressed.”

“S-Sorry.” Shuichi wiped at his eyes some more. He was okay. Well, as okay as the situation would allow him to be. Maybe finally spilling some of his thoughts lessened the burden on his shoulders some. His chest even felt a little lighter.

Kokichi groaned. “Ugh, stop apologizing. Did Yumeno-chan put a spell on you?” Kokichi reached his arms out from under the blanket and grabbed the sides of Shuichi’s face. He turned the other’s head this way and that way and pulled at his cheeks. “Yup, just as I thought.” He shook his head and clicked his tongue. “You’ve been cursed. But I know how to break it!”

Shuichi couldn’t help but smile. “How do you break it then?”

“Like this!” He kissed him. But this kiss was new. It was, dare he think it, _shy_. And, because it was a trait of humanity to inquire about the matters not easily understood, a million thoughts on why Kokichi was suddenly acting so sheepish raced behind Shuichi’s eyelids. Could it have been because they had both just openly cried together for the first time? One delicate kiss was pressed against the contours of his lips before Kokichi made his way to his bottom lip. His movements weren’t exactly _bashful_ , just something _different_. A novelty almost. Downright to the way that a tongue just barely prodded at Shuichi’s lips – and the transition was hazed over, but somehow he ended up with the other curled into in his lap and contently sucking his tongue.

Kokichi hummed when they parted to catch their breaths. He ran his hands over the front of Shuichi’s shirt. “Guess what, guess what.”

“Hm?” Being cornered into a one-track mindset was…

“I figured out the question that Saihara-chan wants to ask me so badly~!” …exactly what Kokichi wanted.

“H-Huh?”

“You wanted to play chess with that special rule because you wanted something, right? You wanted to ask me something important, but because you let me pick chess you kept losing. But that’s okay, because I already figured out the question that Saihara-chan wants to ask me.”

_Why did you break into Rantaro’s room before he was found dead?_

“You… did?”

“Mhm!” Kokichi kissed him again with a loud smack. “I already figured it out! So you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

_Why did you break into Rantaro’s room before he was found dead?_

“Y-You did?” No, he couldn’t have. There’s no way. Kokichi kissed him again, deeply.

“Of course I did! Would I lie to you?” Was Shuichi supposed to answer that question? Kokichi’s hands returned to the sides of Shuichi’s face and he repositioned his legs on either side of Shuichi’s thigh. “So now Saihara-chan doesn’t have to worry anymore.” He whispered directly into Shuichi’s ear. The sensation from his warm breath sent tingles that shot right down Shuichi’s spine. “Isn’t that great?”

_Why did you break into Rantaro’s room before he was found dead?_

“When two people like each other a lot they become telepathically connected. Didn’t you know this?” He slowly grinded himself down on the other’s thigh as a breathy laugh left his lips. “Just kidding~! That’d be impossible. I figured it out after thinking about it for a long, long, long, loooong time.” Shuichi felt the other pout against his neck. “I wish it wasn’t so obvious though. Saihara-chan can be sooo boring sometimes.”

_Why did you break into Rantaro’s room before he was found dead?_

It was getting overwhelming; the pressure against his thigh, against his lips, against his mind. Shuichi’s heart was twisting, his gut was seizing, his brain was collapsing.

_Why did you break into Rantaro’s room before he was found dead?_

“Saihara-chan tastes so good! Only because that ugly question isn’t making his tongue taste so bad anymore.”

_Why did you break into Rantaro’s room before he was found dead?_

“Now you can be even closer to me because I already know what’s on your mind.”

_Why did you break into Rantaro’s room before he was found dead?_

Kokichi began to bend downwards, all while moving his hips against the other’s in a slow circle, and kissed against Shuichi’s Adam’s apple. “Right, Saihara-chan?”

_Why did you break into Rantaro’s room before he was found dead?_

He dragged his lips against the side of his neck and the underside of his jaw. “Right, right, right?”

“Why did you break into Amami-kun’s room before he was found dead?”

“Oh?” Kokichi immediately disconnected his mouth from the other’s skin. _Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God._ Shuichi’s hand robotically moved to his chest. (He was too drained to reach his mouth.) He fucked up – _big time_. How could he let his most guarded thought slip out into the atmosphere so easily like that? “Was that your question?” Kokichi’s eyes slowly rolled up until they connected with Shuichi’s. They just faintly wobbled before he blinked and willed his expression to blank. Kokichi removed himself from Shuichi’s lap and leaned against the headboard. “How boring.” His eyelids slit as he refocused his eyes on the corner of the room.

“I just…” Shuichi sighed and squeezed his eyes shut. It was already out in the air. There was no point in fighting it anymore. “The morning that Amami-kun was found dead, I was on my way to the dormitory and saw you… pick the lock to his room.” He opened his eyes again. Kokichi was still looking away with the same empty look on his face. “ _Why_?” He didn’t mean to gasp around the word, but at least Kokichi’s eyes snapped back in his direction. “I hope—no, I _know_ —you had nothing to do with his death, but _still_ , why?”

Kokichi huffed through his nose. “Amami-chan was acting really, really, really weird, remember? He kept talking about the ‘Ultimate Hunt’ and saying ‘I’m going to end the killing game.’” Shuichi, ever the detective, automatically tracked back. Yes, Rantaro had talked about those things before he died, but was Kokichi present during the conversation? He knew that Kaede had been there, and his mind halted. God, Kaede _and_ Rantaro tried to end the game, and look what happened to them. Their lives were the most valuable things they had and it seemed like whether it was overvalued or undervalued, consequences still came. “So, because Amami-chan obviously knew about things that we didn’t know, I decided to investigate his room. It’s purely a coinkydink that he was killed later.”

“Was there anything worth value in his room?” Kokichi shrugged. “If you did find something, do you… not trust me enough to divulge that information?” Kokichi shook his head. A head shake could mean anything if a person overthought it enough. Could that mean that no, Kokichi did not trust him or was he shaking his head at _not_ trusting him? Shuichi settled on the latter because it was better for his heart.

If Shuichi had managed to trust Kokichi despite firsthand witnessing him break into a victim’s room before a murder, then Kokichi should certainly have no qualms against trusting him too.

(But was it wrong to say that he felt the slightest bit manipulated?)

⁂

“Ouma-kun, that is an _extremely_ precious relic,” Korekiyo hissed. “Please do not treat it so lightly or _I’ll tear out your nerves_.”

“O-Okay, I get it.” Kokichi immediately slid the sword back in its sheath. “Shinguji-chan doesn’t have to be so scary about it.” Shuichi felt himself bristle at the threat. Maki came to mind, with her hand squeezing around Kokichi’s neck while he didn’t step in – so Shuichi subconsciously stepped in between Korekiyo and Kokichi. Which was probably the most obvious thing he could’ve done.

The space between the two boys wasn’t too great to begin with, so of course eyebrows were raised when Shuichi suddenly squeezed himself in between them. He tried to cover it up by reaching behind and moving Kokichi a few steps back so that they were evenly spaced out again and saying, “Is there anything else that’s special about this sword, Shinguji-kun?”

But Korekiyo didn’t take the bait.

He laughed. No, it was more of a snicker. “The power of love is truly a beautiful thing! And to discover it during such a desperate and perilous time—ah, no, this disorderly environment and game that we have been forced to play has surely triggered this intimacy, yes?” Korekiyo was sweating and crossing his arms over his chest to dig his fingers into his shoulders. “Or was this discovered beforehand, hm? Ah, it’s true! The Red String of Fate may tangle and stretch and bend, but it never breaks no matter the place, time, or circumstance!” He flung his arms out and outstretched them upward to nothing in particular. “How marvelous! How absolutely and wondrously _beautiful_!”

Shuichi felt a tug on the back of his jacket. “Saihara-chan, Shinguji-chan is being boring. We should go before his boringness rubs off on us.” Shuichi nodded and let himself be pulled out of the Research Lab without even saying goodbye. Perhaps it would be easier to examine the lab without Korekiyo present. Shuichi’s jacket was tugged at again once they were midway through the hall. He stopped walking and looked down at Kokichi. “Being with Saihara-chan is bad, huh?” It wasn’t atypical of Kokichi to give off the wall statements. In fact, one could say that that was a trait of his.

“Being with me… is bad?” Kokichi’s grip tightened.

“Yup! Like, _really_ bad. Not ‘embarrassing’ bad, but just… _bad_ , you know?”

A small, quiet laugh left Shuichi’s mouth (and, as expected, Kokichi’s gaze briefly dropped to his lips). “I’m afraid that I don’t know.”

“Ugh, do I have to spell it out for you?” He looked down the hall as he continued, “It’s bad because it’s exploitable. It’s a weak point that can be utilized as a strategy and an advantage for the game. Tojo-chan figured out Hoshi-chan’s weak point and killed him using that. I figured out Harukawa-chan’s weak point and she almost killed me because of that. Think about it—” his eyes stopped tracing the hall and the aura about him darkened “—if someone managed to figure out the Ultimate Detective’s weak point then they’d escape one-hundred percent. Why? Because guess who’s been solving all the cases so far? And if someone managed to break that person...” He snapped his fingers. “Their chance at escaping is as good as guaranteed.” Shuichi was left to digest this alone after Kokichi stretched up on the tip of his toes to kiss him with a whispered, “Vice versa too, if someone figured out my weak point—if I had any, that is,” before he skipped down the hallway.

⁂

Shuichi had used the word “betrayal” before to describe his feelings after declaring Kaede and Kirumi as the Blackened. He had meant “betrayal” in the sense of selfishness and disappointment then, in how he couldn’t believe that people who had worked hard to gain his and everyone else’s trust would do such a thing as murder and risk everyone’s lives, whether the motive could be thought of as good or bad.

But now he felt “betrayal” in all of its negative connotations as he watched Korekiyo cackle and sputter nonsense with his arms outstretched and his eyes rolling to the back of his head. Between that and Himiko and Kaito’s flushed faces (one from grief, and one from… sickness? Kaito had insisted that he was okay), things weren’t looking too well.

Kokichi’s voice cut through Korekiyo’s rant. “Ooh, so you just wanted to kill, huh? You wanted to slaughter a bunch, huh? _That_ was your purpose, huh, Shinguji-chan?” Kokichi’s eyes were all crescent-shaped along with his grin. He managed to bring Korekiyo down from his high with that.

“Excuse me,” he snapped, “do _not_ make me out to be some sort of bloodthirsty, indiscriminate killer. I killed for love. Out of all the people here surely _you_ would understand that, Ouma-kun.”

“Pfft.” Miu clicked her tongue. “What kinda stupid joke is that, ya creep? That virgin Shitty Shota knows as much about ‘love’ as you do, Fucks-His-Sisterguji.”

Korekiyo waved his finger. “Quite the contrary actually. I have extensively and strenuously studied everyone here so I can claim with absolute confidence that Ouma-kun along with Saihara-kun are the only ones here who can relate to me.”

“Shinguji-kun,” Shuichi warned. (Unfortunately, unlike his fellow friends, his voice wasn’t the kind to have a biting edge to it.) “Stop.”

“Why stop? A connection that ascends physical managed to be formed in this deadly plane of existence.” He unzipped his mask. A lipstick-stained smirk taunted Shuichi. “Love is too beautiful of a thing to keep under wraps. It must be shared until it makes everyone else’s hearts overwhelm and burst with emotion.”

“Ey, Suckhara,” Miu called out, “what the fuck’s he goin’ on about?” Shuichi shook his head.

As per usual they were forced to watch the execution – Shuichi wasn’t sure if the bit at the end with Korekiyo’s “ghost” being “exorcised” was real or additional phantasmagoria of the new world which was the Academy and its killing game – and afterward, Himiko swept everyone else into the tidal wave of her closeted sea of emotions.

Shuichi spared a teary glance toward Kokichi and he managed to catch the smaller boy blinking rapidly, and he couldn’t help but flash a broken smile that said  _We’re already crying again, huh?_ and Kokichi sniffled and turned his head around in response.

⁂

Once everyone dispersed for the night, Kokichi suggested that he and Shuichi take a walk through the courtyard again. (Maybe “suggested” was too nice of a word; it was more like Shuichi’s arm was being pulled into the courtyard and he was letting it happen.) They hadn’t walked in the courtyard since that fateful day when everyone was still alive together. But since then the area had been filled with new memories of Shuichi’s (one-sided) workout sessions with Kaito and later on Maki.

The memory of his last workout filled his head as Kokichi’s hand moved from pulling at his sleeve to tugging at his fingertips, when Maki was being all cryptic as she usually was and asked if he had been in love with Kaede and what it felt like when Kaito had went to the bathroom. And Shuichi remembered answering honestly about the love he had shared with Kaede, the love of mutual loyalty and selfsame hopes. Shuichi liked to think that he shared a different sort of love with everyone in the Academy. At least on his end. Some people seemed to disregard their relationships more easily than others…

Shuichi hadn’t been attending the workout sessions lately ever sense the Maki Incident. He was sure that there was a strain in their relationship but he wasn’t sure if it was temporary or permanent. No, he was being ridiculous. It was obviously something temporary. After Angie and Tenko’s deaths they had set aside their differences and investigated together. Maki had proved to be an adequate asset and assistant during the investigation too, noticing things like the tape underneath Angie’s body and properly evaluating Tenko’s body which both proved to be important points Shuichi used to condemn Korekiyo during the class trial.

But, like most things, it was still difficult. Shuichi couldn’t find himself wanting to spark up a conversation with her just because anymore. The tense silence that followed after he turned down Kaito’s invitation (or more accurately: demand) to work out still lingered in his mind. Maki had been lingering farther off in the background of the dormitory and didn’t meet him in the eye. Shuichi had opened the door ajar so that they couldn’t see Kokichi in his bed, still nursing the blemishes that Maki had given him a few days prior.

Shuichi had always been the type to dwell on the past. Such a characteristic had its advantages and disadvantages in the situation he was in, but he tried to live in the present more for Kaede, Kaito, and Kokichi. Loitering too much in the past could make him miss out on new tender moments that the present had, such as how the air in between him and Kokichi no longer felt awkward but raw in the best way, and how the shorter boy’s eyes were pools that reflected the shielded stars’ light just a little too perfectly.

They found themselves covered in the shadows of the entranceway to one of the buildings, Shuichi wasn’t paying attention to which, with Kokichi’s arms around his neck and his around the other’s waist.

_Aren’t you being selfish right now?_

_You really think that you have the right to be self-indulgent when all of your friends are suffering alone?_

_You don’t deserve this._

Shuichi sincerely prayed that Kokichi didn’t catch the wince that nearly took over his face. His thoughts always jumbled up and went into overdrive at all the wrong moments. Kokichi’s head cocked to the side. “Hey, guess what,” he whispered.

“What?”

He flicked Shuichi in the middle of his forehead. “Tag, you’re it!” And he was already gone. Shuichi figured that he had no choice but to chase after him. (Kokichi seemed to like being chased anyway.)

And living in the present had never felt so good. Shuichi didn’t imagine that chasing Kokichi in the courtyard underneath the stars and the moonlight could become his new definition of feeling alive but life was always full of surprises – being thrown into the whimsical ways of childishness and the unknown was one of them. At one point he somehow managed to lose track of Kokichi and when he tried to take a second to catch his breath and look around, the shorter boy appeared again out of thin air and hopped onto his back.

And when Kokichi wrapped his arms over his shoulders and leaned toward his ear to say, “Aah, Saihara-chan is sooo boring to play with. He’s too slow to even catch a slowpoke like me,” Shuichi figured out that his second favorite thing about Kokichi was his spontaneity. It flowed so nicely with Shuichi’s solid sound structure. Opposites truly did attract because Shuichi himself would never have initiated anything that was too bold or desperate while Kokichi wouldn’t hesitate to do so. Kokichi rubbed his nose across the back of his neck as he snuggled further against his back. Shuichi didn’t even bother to suppress the shudder that traveled down his spine, and Kokichi certainly felt it, because he said, “Hm, is Saihara-chan cold? Good thing I’m here to warm him up,” and he breathed directly against his neck and his ears until Shuichi was sure that they turned pink and he rubbed his hands over the other’s shoulders.

“I-I’m not cold, Ouma-kun. It’s actually pretty warm out here tonight.” And Kokichi was even hotter being so close against him.

“Well then if you’re warm maybe you should take this cheap jacket off.” Kokichi was already reaching down and unbuttoning his jacket and rubbing his hands over his exposed collarbone and shirtfront. Shuichi felt his arms tremble. He quickly set Kokichi off of his back. No one needed to accidentally get hurt because his body was growing weaker and weaker by the second. Were “bold” and “desperate” the correct words to describe Kokichi? Maybe. Maybe not. But it was certainly correct way to describe the space in between and all around them.

Shuichi took Kokichi’s hands by the wrist before they could reach underneath his shirt. “We should go back to my room.”

“Why?”

“H-Huh?”

“T-That’ll take too long. Let’s just do it here.” Did his voice just _crack_? What was going on? “Hurry up, Shuichi-chaaan! Before I get bored.” No, he knew exactly what was going on. This had surprisingly become one of the few areas that Shuichi was the stronger person in. Through lidded eyes he surveyed the courtyard and spotted an area that wasn’t only exclusively secluded in the shadows but also far away from the dormitory, and— _God_ —he couldn’t believe he was doing this. He felt a smile begin to build up against his lips before Kokichi kissed it away.

Being away from the dorms was important because Kokichi was _loud_. He was loud in general, especially when he got excited, and it was no different when he got riled up too. They were huddled up on the grass together, tucked into the darkness, and Shuichi made sure to push the shorter boy against his neck to stifle his moans as best as he could, and the other seemed perfectly preoccupied with attaching his lips to his neck. Shuichi lifted and wrapped the other’s leg over his. If Kokichi wanted something bold and desperate, quick yet satisfying, then he would do his best to deliver it. He reached into the Kokichi’s pants and rubbed his hand over the growing bulge in other’s boxers until Kokichi’s sucking and kisses against his neck turned into open-mouth kisses and the occasional wanton licks. Kokichi couldn’t even move his mouth anymore just from a touch. He couldn’t even control any part of his body anymore. He hated Shuichi so much. They weren’t even doing anything _too_ special, he wasn’t even getti— He spoke too soon. Shuichi reached past his boxers and was directly stroking his cock with his hand instead of just rubbing against it. Kokichi nearly bit his tongue off trying to hold back a moan.

“Hm?” Shuichi looked down as he hummed. He always so gentle. Kokichi hated him so much. ( _I thought it was a rule of thumb to lie to everyone except yourself?_ ) “Did you say something?” The words could’ve easily been mistaken as something dominant or even mocking, but they _weren’t_ and that was precisely why Kokichi hated him so much.

“K-Ki…” He still couldn’t get the words out, and Shuichi spreading his legs wider and beginning to squeeze around his length was no help either. He couldn’t believe that he was actually _struggling_ to catch his breath. He gasped out, “S-S-Saihara-chan s-should… should kiss me,” and he was obliged. It was still embarrassing to be so uncontrollably noisy, but if Shuichi liked it then Kokichi figured that he wouldn’t tear himself up about it too much (for now). The pit of his stomach heated up and he couldn’t even pretend like he was returning Shuichi’s kisses anymore. His sobs peaked: “S-Saihara-chan, Saihara-chan, Saihara-chan, _please_ —”

“I know, Ouma-kun, I know,” Shuichi panted. “It’s okay.” Kokichi’s body tensed and Shuichi was already ready to smother his gasps and cries with his own lips. He even dotted kisses across Kokichi’s lips and cheeks as he still rode the wave of sweet euphoria. “I love you,” he whispered. His words were so soft and casual and just the slightest bit displaced that another ripple flowed through Kokichi’s body. Something that was part emotional and part  _really gross_ —he hated it. He hated it so much.

He hated how despite being covered in the shadows a stray pair of moonbeams stubbornly struck through the darkness and made Shuichi’s eyes gleam in all the wrong ways. He hated how he couldn’t control his postcoital facial expressions, and he was sure that Shuichi noticed his helpless gazing. He hated how he probably looked like some sort of disgusting, blissed out lovesick puppy. And despite all this, Kokichi still couldn’t find the strength in his heart to return the other’s words. So he compromised with an airtight hug. Hopefully it would (but he knew that it wouldn’t) suffice.

> v. bughouse: _a popular chess variant played on two chessboards by four players in teams of two._

Sweat contained sugar. And it also contained salt. Just like the water used for the _harae_ ceremonies to rinse all the bad luck, disease, and guilt from the hands, face, and shrine before an offering was made to the gods.

“Hey, Saihara-kun.”

“Y-Yes?” Tsumugi was in the motions of making another drink. Shuichi redirected his eyes around the Research Lab. There was something oddly hypnotizing about her cocktail shaker and Shuichi didn’t want to be caught up in its spell again.

“It’s plain to see that you’re worried about something. Is something the matter? If you don’t mind me asking, that is.” Shuichi could hear that she had finished mixing the drink and turned back around. She garnished it with a maraschino cherry before she passed it to him.

Shuichi plucked at the cherry in his cup as he thought it over. Out of everyone remaining among them, Tsumugi was actually somehow the most mature in the bunch. He took a sip of his drink. Maybe confessing his worries to her would be met with positive results. “I’m worried about Ouma-kun,” he admitted. “Him running away with the motive like that—”

“So Shinguji-kun was right? The rumors are true?” She nearly leapt over the counter that separated them. Shuichi jumped back. It was a miracle that he saved his cup from tipping over. “A secret _yaoi_ romance has commenced right underneath my nose? How could this be?! Since when did you have a _shoutarou_ complex, Saihara-kun? I never would’ve guessed that!” She was starting to drool. “So between you and Ouma-kun, who’s the _uke_ and who’s the _seme_? Wha—? Oh, sorry…” She must’ve finally noticed the uncomfortable look on Shuichi’s face. He let a breath out of his nose once she backed up and wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve. So much for thinking that Tsumugi was the most mature. “No, no, I’ll be serious, really! Tell me what you’re worried about.”

“Ouma-kun has just been acting strange, or _stranger than usual_ lately.”

“How so? If you want to talk about it, that is.”

“Just like...” He sighed. Hopefully Tsumugi wouldn’t freak out again. “Sometimes lately when I wake up, he’s not there anymore.”

“You two _sleep_ toget—?!” She settled back into her seat again. “S-Sorry! Continue, continue.”

“And then he just made that big scene today running off with the motive keycard too.” He tapped his fingers against his chin. “It’s been worrying me a lot lately.” Shuichi felt weird. Weird like he was a schoolgirl gossiping to her friend about boy problems. No, he couldn’t demean himself like that. It was greater than simple “gossip.” It was a genuine worry and concern that had been weighing heavy on his mind for the past week or so.

“Well…” Tsumugi tapped her finger against her chin too. An uneasy smile graced her face. “To be honest, Saihara-kun, Ouma-kun has never struck me as the most, um, _trustworthy_ guy, but since you’ve proven to be a reliable guy, I’ll trust him for now by association. How’s that?”

“That’s… good?”

“Okay, good!” Her smile eased. “Maybe he’s just investigating, you know? Aha!” She held up her finger. “According to the school regulations we’re technically granted the right to have the freedom to explore to our discretion. I bet that Ouma-kun has probably taken that privilege for his own independent reasons and it only seems plain strange to us because we usually all explore around together as a group or in teams. Like you and me right now!”

“Shirogane-san, I actually didn’t think about it like that, thank you. And thank you for the drink too.”

“No problem!” She picked up the cocktail shaker again. “Are you ready for another one?”

“B-But I haven’t finished this one yet!”

⁂

It was a better time than over to speak to Kokichi privately since he had popped back into existence for the Flashback Light. Shuichi made sure to catch up with Kokichi once everyone dispersed after viewing and discussing the new memories that they had been gifted. Kokichi only glanced back with his hands behind his head when Shuichi beckoned for him to wait up. They walked in silence until they were completely alone in the hall. Despite being left to their lonesome, Shuichi still spoke in a hushed tone. “Did you find anything with the keycard?”

“Hm… Let me think, it was so long ago…” Kokichi rolled his eyes in mock thought. Shuichi stopped walking and waited. “Hey, guess what!” He was smiling a little too widely. Not a good sign.

“Wha—?” Kokichi kissed him suddenly. It was one of his loud, exaggerated kisses.

“Mhm, Saihara-chan tastes so good!” Shuichi blinked. Kokichi was giving him a look like he was expecting something.

Shuichi tried again. “Um, do you think that whatever motive the card has is bad enough for someone to try to kill again?”

“Do you want another kiss?” Shuichi felt himself frown. He assumed right (at least, he thought so). Kokichi was doing some weird attempt at trying to answer his questions without direct verbal answers. There couldn’t have been anyone else overhearing them. Unless he was worried about a person that they couldn’t see?

“Did you hide the motive away— _permanently_?”

“Ugh.” Kokichi replaced his hands to the back of his head. “I don’t feel like kissing anymore.” He turned around on his heel and continued marching down the hall.

“H-Hey, wait!” Kokichi stopped again and cocked his head as he turned around. “So, the motive’s still available?” Kokichi gave him another kiss before he scampered down the hall.

The hours of nighttime were approaching and Kokichi still wanted to run off somewhere? Shuichi went toward the dormitory. Whatever he had discovered – _if_ he had even discovered something in the first place – had to be worthwhile, and hopefully he would share it soon.

“Saihara-kun!” Shuichi nearly jumped out of his skin. Gonta was standing by the entranceway to the dorms and Shuichi had somehow managed to walk past him without noticing him at all. Had he seriously been so deep in thought over Kokichi that he could walk right past someone who was almost seven feet tall? “Gonta thinks it’s a little too late to be out…”

“Oh, Gonta-kun, I was heading to my room just now. But…” Gonta had been growing more precarious ever since the disbandment of Angie’s Student Council. Of course he would be opposed to seeing people out and about during nighttime hours. “I’m planning on meeting up with Momota-kun and Harukawa-san to work out in the courtyard a little later because I haven’t done it in a while.” Gonta’s frown deepened.

“Hoshi-kun and Angie-san were both killed during nighttime. Gonta doesn’t like the idea of anyone else being out at night and possibly being killed too. And…” He clenched his fists and cast his gaze aside. “And Gonta wasn’t able to protect them! Gonta doesn’t want the same thing to happen to Saihara-kun and Gonta not be able to protect you too.”

“Gonta-kun…” Shuichi completely understood the other’s feelings. “I promise to go straight back to my room once we’re done and I promise that nothing bad is going to happen when I’m gone, okay?” Gonta didn’t look like he liked that idea either. He clenched and unclenched his hands for a few seconds before he nodded.

“Okay. Gonta trusts Saihara-kun. And Gonta has decided something too.”

“Hm? What did you decide on?”

“Gonta will announce it to everyone tomorrow. Goodnight and be safe, Saihara-kun!” Gonta waved and headed to his own room.

⁂

It must’ve been around midnight when Kokichi broke into Shuichi’s room. Shuichi wondered why he even bothered with locking the door in the first place.

_What if someone tries to sneak in and kill you and Kokichi while you sleep?_

Shuichi dismissed the thought from his mind.

“I came into your room earlier but you weren’t here,” Kokichi whined. He plopped himself on the bed next to Shuichi.

“Sorry, I decided to work out with Momota-kun and Harukawa-san again because I haven’t done it in a long time.”

“Ooh,” Kokichi rolled over so that his head was in Shuichi’s lap, “so you were out having fun with your new friends instead of waiting for me then?”

“Well, there wouldn’t be a need to ‘wait’ if you didn’t run off all the time, you know.” Kokichi dug his chin into Shuichi’s knee at that. “You go off on your own, you even took a nap in the courtyard once—do you have no fear?” Kokichi shrugged.

“Things can happen whether you’re alone or with someone, Saihara-chan.” “With someone”? Such as when Shuichi was with Kaede, and later on when they were all with Korekiyo?

Kokichi turned his head and lied on Shuichi’s thigh. Shuichi moved his fingers over his mouth as he studied the shorter boy. In just a few minutes of silence, it looked like he was already being lulled to sleep. Was he tired from doing whatever he did whenever he was alone?

Shuichi figured that Kokichi was asleep after another five minutes passed and he felt the other’s body grow lax on top of him. He still moved his hand to stroke the top of Kokichi’s head as he leaned back against the headboard of his bed. The Ultimate Supreme Leader lived up to his name. He was a tough cookie to crack.

“What would it take for things to change between the two of us?”

Shuichi looked down with a start, but at least he didn’t jump and completely throw the other off of his lap. Kokichi’s eyes were still closed, but he wasn’t one to sleep talk. “What do you mean?” The question was definitely out of blue, even for a relatively out of the blue person like Kokichi. And because Shuichi was tired and spread thin from worry, he challenged their bubble of conformity with outright asking, “Did you do something that would cause things to change between us?”

“No.” Kokichi yawned and snuggled further against Shuichi’s legs. “I would never do such a thing.” At the moment, Shuichi wasn’t sure if that was a truth or a lie.

He decided that it was a lie during the third class trial after Kokichi revealed the plan of the “Killing Game Busters.”

> vi. gambit: _a sacrifice, usually of a pawn, used to gain an early advantage in space or time in the opening of the game._

Tears contained salt. And so did funerals. Salt from the ocean burned the eyes because people are innately selfish. They could bear the burden of their own tears but not the sting from things that they could not comprehend, such as the vastness and complexity of the ocean and other human beings, dead or alive.

Shuichi shuffled through his memories of the week. _How could this happen?_ Was there anything amiss about that night when they had used the Flashback Light? Kokichi had disappeared toward the start of nighttime and returned at midnight, but he had said that he had gone to Shuichi’s room before Shuichi had returned from the courtyard with Kaito and Maki, which was a correct statement. So, Kokichi could’ve gone off to do whatever until Shuichi came back. That went for one lot of unaccounted time, about three to four hours worth too, and that wasn’t even counting when he had run off with the keycard.

Shuichi remembered that Kokichi had been acting strange the next day. He woke up without Kokichi by his side, nothing new again – another lot of unaccounted time of unknown whereabouts to add to the list, and went to the dining hall to walk into the middle of the aftershocks of Gonta’s announcement.

“Even if you did that, you wouldn’t be able to stop the killing game,” Kokichi had said. The way that his eyes slid over not only Gonta but the rest of the group was easy to put anyone on edge.

“What do you mean Gonta won’t?!” Gonta had asked.

“I meant what I said, that it won’t stop the killing game. In fact, why would you even want to stop it in the first place? The game’s just gotten good. It’d be a waste to stop it now, you know?” Shuichi knew good and well that Kokichi was spouting nonsense, but others were quick to take his bait, such as Kaito. The two of them launched into an argument as Shuichi tried to think of the reasoning behind Kokichi’s words. “If there’re no victims and no Blackened, then there’s no game! C’mon guys, do I really have to do everything myself? If someone else doesn’t hurry up and start the next killing, then I guess I’ll just do it myse—”

“Cut it out already!” At the blink of an eye, Kaito hit Kokichi across the face. The sound of the impact echoed throughout the room. “Ouma, what the fuck’s gotten into you?! For your sake, I _really_ hope that you’re just putting on some weird type of performance right now. I mean, you’ve been weird this whole time, but this takes the cake! Cut it out before I knock some sense into ya!”

“But you… already punched him…” Tsumugi murmured, her face blanched.

“Momota-kun, stop it!” Kiibo said. “Violence is bad, no matter the reason! It could be the origin of another killing…”

The familiar feeling of wanting to freeze up immediately prickled at Shuichi’s senses, but he fought it. He stepped in between Kaito and Kokichi, and he knew that he couldn’t come up with an excuse to brush it off like he had done with Korekiyo. His actions were loud and clear.

“Momota-kun, that’s enough!” Kaito blinked as he took a step back. “Like Kiibo-kun said, there’s no need for violence. That just brews more violence.”

“What the fuc—Whose side are you on?!” He raised his still-clenched fist in the air. “You’ve been taking Ouma’s side a lot lately, what’s up with that?”

“I’m not taking anyon—”

“Uh, duh-doy!” Miu butted in. “It’s ‘cause Shittyhara is the Eva Strap-on to the Shota’s Adolf Tickler and the Sherlock Homo to his Dr. Cocktson. Didn’t ya hear what Shinguji said before he bit the bullet, or were we all too busy cryin’ to notice?”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Kaito said.

“They’re _you know_.” Miu made an O shape with one of her hands and slid the index finger of her other hand through it as she laughed.

“W-What? Don’t be ridiculous, Shuichi would _never_ stoop so low with someone like Ouma! Right, Shuichi?! That was just Shinguji talkin’ crazy, as usual.”

Shuichi took a long look at Kokichi. Kokichi’s eyes were glued to the ground. He put himself into his shoes. Kokichi was clearly putting on some type of performance like Kaito had said and he was investigating _something_ , most likely a way to get out of the Academy (at least, that’s what Shuichi had assumed at the moment, but in hindsight, he wasn’t so sure anymore). Everyone was waiting for a response from Shuichi, and he was sure that Kokichi was too. Shuichi, still putting himself in the other’s shoes, thought about how he would feel if someone stated that a relationship between the two of them was impossible because of them was “better” than the other.

Shuichi settled on going down the ambiguous route like he had with Korekiyo: “So what? It doesn’t matter if we’re together or not, I’m not going to let you hurt him.”

“But what about when the No Ass Assassin went all BDSM on him, huh?” Miu was always unhelpful in all the wrong moments. “You didn’t do anything then, Slowhara.” Shuichi grimaced.

“That was a mistak—”

“Wait,” Kaito cut in, “that wasn’t an answer! Why’re you being so vague—?”

“…Enjoy your breakfast, Saihara-chan.” Shuichi looked down at Kokichi. He had never heard him speak in such a small voice before, not even when he had cried. Kokichi, still looking down, left the cafeteria. Shuichi was one-hundred percent sure that he needed to follow after him before he disappeared somewhere.

Shuichi still stopped once he reached the entryway. “What’s between me and Ouma-kun is the same as what I have with everyone here. And if we’re going to keep Akamatsu-san’s promise and stop this killing game and escape from this Academy, then we can’t do anything that risks more violence and more distrust. That’s the _last_ thing we need.” He left before he could hear anyone else’s responses.

⁂

Shuichi, with a hastily made icepack in hand, rushed out to the courtyard as fast as he could. Kokichi was already gone. Shuichi decided to look in the dormitory first.

He knocked on Kokichi’s door. No answer. It was locked too. He went into his own room, and there Kokichi was, in a bundle underneath the blankets. Kokichi must’ve been in pretty bad shape if Shuichi could find the self-proclaimed king of hide-and-seek in the first place he looked. Shuichi turned the lights back off and closed the door behind him. He didn’t hear any cries or whimpers, and wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. Shuichi sat next to him on the bed and rolled his body over. Kokichi refused to look at him. No matter. He pressed the icepack against his reddening cheek anyway. Kaito had definitely hit Kokichi harder than he had hit Shuichi, enough to leave a mark maybe.

“I’m sorry that Momota-kun hit you, but… you know he’s hotheaded and impulsive and that saying those things about wanting to become the Blackened was going to set him off—but he took it too far though.” A shitty situation seemed to be becoming shitter. Kokichi’s fingers wrapped around the icepack and he shook Shuichi’s hand off. “This is more of a time than ever to work together and I don’t like seeing my friends argue.” An absurd thought came to mind: what if he had to choose between Kokichi and Kaito someday? But that was, of course, senseless and he dismissed the thought immediately.

“…We’re friends?” His voice was still so small and unlike him.

“Yes, we’re friends—”

“No we’re not. I would never be friends with someone as lame, ugly, boring, and uninteresting as Saihara-chan.”

“O-Okay. But I was saying, yes—”

“I don’t know why you’re even bothering to talk to me right now—”

“—we’re friends in the sense that, like everyone else here, we’re going to believe in each other and work together to get out of here—”

“—because we’re _not_ friends and we’ll _never_ be friends. Why would the Ultimate Supreme Leader bother with someone as unimportant as you? You’re nothing but—”

“—but we’re also friends in a different way than I’m friends with everyone else here—”

“—a worthless lowlife. You’re worse than swine. Your personality, face, voice, and body are all boring. I could get more entertainment watching paint dry. You’re wasting my time right now—”

“—because you make my heart hurt, a-and I think about you all the time. I-I’ve been worried to death over you lately.” Kokichi closed his mouth. “So, yes, we’re friends because I want to and need to work together with you to get out of here but you’re also different than all my other friends here because I have no clue what I would do if I lost you. You know that.” Shuichi mustered up a smile. “And I know that if you really thought that I was a ‘lowlife’ and ‘ugly’ and ‘boring,’ then you wouldn’t be in my room right now. You could’ve literally hid somewhere where I would never find you or locked yourself in your own room. But you’re here for a reason.” He leaned down to kiss his forehead.

“…Nothing’s going to change between us, right?” Just the other day he had asked a similar question. Had Kokichi discovered something that he considered detrimental to their relationship?

“No, not if I can help it.” Shuichi kissed the tip of his nose. Kokichi looked him in the eye now. His eyes were Shuichi’s favorite thing about him; he had even admitted that before. But now his eyes had lost their glow. He pushed the fringe of Kokichi’s hair out of his eyes and stroked his thumb over his cheek. It was difficult. He kissed the corners of his lips, slowly. It was difficult but they were going to work through it.

There was a knock on the door. Shuichi patted Kokichi’s side before he stood up. “Iruma-san, is there something wrong?” She had never knocked on his door before.

“Nope, not yet!” Miu put her hands on her hips and laughed. At least one of them was in a good mood. “I came here—emphasis on _came_ —to tell ya that we’re all meetin’ up at the computer lab on the fourth floor tomorrow. So be there or be square! Hopefully you’ll be done fuckin’ Ouma Cuckichi by then, right, Sluthara? I know he’s in here.” She tried to look past his shoulder but Shuichi stepped aside to block her view. “Or should I say _Sub_ hara? You’re totally a bottom! Ooh, did I interrupt your sesh? I bet he got your hole all nice and gapin’ and ready, huh? Actually…” A blush crept up her cheeks. “M-M-Mind if I join in or watch or somethin’…? I-I-I haven’t been able to get my rocks off ever since we got her—”

“Thank you for the invitation, Iruma-san! We’ll be there.” He held himself back from slamming the door shut.

⁂

Kokichi even had moments of absences when they had entered the Virtual World. Such as when he had gone off with Gonta when they first arrived to look for the secret of the outside world and when he was exploring the salon of the mansion by himself. Those moments were especially vital. Kokichi certainly had the time to concoct a plan during those intervals.

And then after the initial incident of Miu’s avatar not moving and everyone quickly logging out, Kokichi asked for Shuichi to stick behind so they could speak privately. And Shuichi knew that Kokichi had a habit of doing things at inappropriate times, but he couldn’t have picked a worse time. Shuichi still looked back at him with his hand on the telephone, ready to log out once Kokichi said whatever he needed to say.

The vision of hindsight certainly was 20/20, especially with Kokichi. He was one of those people whose words held more weight once they were mulled over and always sunk in during the tender hours of the night.

_“What would it take for things to change between the two of us?”_

_“…Nothing’s going to change between us, right?”_

And now: “I love you~.” Shuichi dropped the phone back into its cradle. “And that’s why Saihara-chan doesn’t need to be with Momota-chan or anyone else anymore, because you only need me. We’re better off working together apart from all your ‘friends,’ right?”

“Ouma-ku—”

“And I bet your first name will sound better coming off of my tongue than Momota-chan’s too.”

“Ouma-kun,” Shuichi said again, firmly, “I love you, too. But we have to go right now. We can talk about this later, okay?” Then he picked up the phone again, said his name, and logged out.

⁂

Was there anything out of order during the investigation? Kokichi had insisted upon being Shuichi’s investigative partner (and acted like nothing happened just moments ago when they had logged out). Yes, Kokichi had been following him like a puppy all throughout the time they had to investigate right up until it was time for the class trial.

And those were all of the unaccounted times for Kokichi for just the past week where Shuichi had absolutely no idea what he was doing. Shuichi fully returned his mind to the trial. He had been with the ebbs and flows of it as he took a trip down memory lane, but he knew what he needed to do to get the truth out.

He needed to lie to the master liar himself.

“Ouma-kun… you really are lying, aren’t you?”

“Huh?” Kokichi pouted. “About what?”

“When I went to go check up on the salon back then, you weren’t there. So, where were you? And I waited for you to come back too, but you never did.”

To say that Ouma Kokichi was royally pissed off was a rich understatement.

He painted on the coldest, nastiest expression that he could as his eyes shot daggers into Shuichi. Everyone else’s insistent voices of how Shuichi could never lie and how Kokichi needed to tell the truth faded into the background. It felt like Shuichi and Kokichi were the only people in the courtroom. Kokichi’s lips curled into a snarl. The world became silent again. “‘You make my heart hurt, and I think about you all the time. I’ve been worried to death over you lately. Yes, we’re friends because I want to and need to work together with you to get out of here but you’re also different than all my other friends here because I have no clue what I would do if I lost you.’ Was that a lie, Saihara-chan?”

The last thing that Shuichi could have expected was for Kokichi to throw his words back at him in such a dire moment. He clutched his hands over the sides of his podium until his knuckles turned white. Kokichi had created an inescapable catch-22 for Shuichi: tell Kokichi that his words from before were the truth but expose his perjury or stick to his lie but ultimately further drive a wedge in between the two of them.

Shuichi let go of the podium. He just needed to worm around everything properly. “M-My previous words have nothing to do with the fact that I didn’t see you in the salon, Ouma-kun.”

“Lies,” Kokichi spat out, “aren’t spoken to help people. They’re spoken to be polite. And as soon as a person finds out that something’s a lie, they deny everything!” He threw his head back in laughter as his skin paled. “ _Everyone’s_ easily swayed by lies—even me!” The last thing Shuichi ever wanted was to hurt Kokichi, but he needed to know the absolute truth. What made it worse was that Shuichi knew _exactly_ why Kokichi was upset and he couldn’t do anything immediately to correct it. He understood that his words before could be misconstrued into meaning that Shuichi held Kokichi on a pedestal way above everyone else and would drop everything for him – it was obvious that Kokichi thought that, completely evident from what he said before they logged out of the Virtual World. Shuichi had to wait to tell the truth and further cement the distance in between them as he did and he didn’t ever want to initiate such a painful thing.

“Oum—”

“You know what? Even though he lied to me, I’m not going to get in the way of Saihara-chan’s ‘true love’ of being able to deduce and protect his precious little friends. So everybody,” he slammed his hands against his podium, “open your ears nice and wide, because I’m going to confess everything right here, right now!” His voice had never sounded so venomous. “Isn’t it funny how now Saihara-chan has to go against his beloved Momota-chan’s teachings of readily believing in everyone? Now you have to be doubtful because you’re the Ultimate Detective. Well…” He shrugged. “There’s no helping it. That’s what a detective is after all: a dirty doubtful deceiver.”

Shuichi couldn’t even argue against the other’s words if he wanted to. Gonta’s anguish disrupted him. It only took a few more minutes for him to be caught between a rock and a hard place. He had Kokichi _and_ Kaito mad at him and the weight of Gonta’s verdict crushing his shoulders.

“... _I_ came up with the plan to kill her.”

Shuichi’s heart dropped.

He wasn’t sure how his vocal cords were still functioning. “Why would you come up with a plan to kill someone and make someone else go through with it?” It was an obviously overloaded question. Kokichi slowly blinked as he relocated his hands behind his head in a faux-casual pose (yet the expression on his face read anything but).

“Since you’re my _partner_ , Saihara-chan, you’ll cooperate, right? Because if we don’t find the truth then your beloved friends that you hold in such high esteem will all die. And you don’t want that, do you?” He had never ever spoken so coldly to him.

And Shuichi returned the favor before his closing argument when he told Kokichi to stop telling Gonta to confess, that was _his_ job and his job only.

⁂

Shuichi was extremely quiet after the trial and Gonta’s execution. Disturbingly so. Annoyingly so. It was almost laughable. Before, Shuichi’s thoughts were always so vivid but now they were suddenly completely closed off to Kokichi and _Kokichi_ was the one whose thoughts were screaming and clawing to reach Shuichi’s inaccessible mind.

_“What would it take for things to change between the two of us?”_

_“…Nothing’s going to change between us, right?”_

_“I love you.”_

Kokichi was repeating the words ad nauseam in his head and getting absolutely nothing in return. He had done everything out of pure paranoia. _That_ was the root of all of his evil. Shuichi had to know that. He had to know how hard to was for him to force Shuichi’s question about Rantaro out. And how hard it was to utilize his “I love you” as a last ditch strategy and to no longer be able to save it for a perfect time in the future.  _Everything_ was a result of being pushed to the edge of psychosis. Shuichi had to know that he didn’t want this. This was the last resort. ( _How is he supposed to know all this shit that you’ve never said out loud, dumbass?_ )

Kokichi made sure that each statement he made was crazier than the last – _anything_ to get Shuichi’s attention, but he was literally grabbing the attention of everyone except the detective’s.

“I love seeing you all suffer!”

Kaito: “A-Are you _fucking_ serious…?” Not Shuichi.

“And what’s so wrong about that, Harumaki-chan? Last time I checked, you killed for money!”

Maki: “A bastard like you doesn’t have the right to call me ‘Harumaki.’” Not Shuichi.

“From the bottom of my heart, I want to see all of you suffer!”

Kiibo: “O-Ouma-kun, stop!” Not Shuichi.

“Didn’t I tell you that I was going to restart the killing game?”

Himiko: “Stop talking crazy before I put a silencing spell on you!” Not Shuichi.

“So let’s have a bloodbath frenzy! That’s why I made those two idiots die in the first place—this is what I wanted!”

Tsumugi: “O-Ouma-kun, that’s enough…” Shuichi moved his hand to his mouth. It was a well-known gesture he did when he was deep in thought about something. Kokichi’s heart clenched. Had he finally caught the other’s attention?

“From now on let’s enjoy this killi—!”

“You could’ve told me that you discovered the secret of the outside world.” Shuichi’s voice was dripping with cold fury. Everyone’s heads startled his way. “You could’ve told me that you figured out that Iruma-san was plotting against you. You could’ve saved the motive. You could’ve logged out of the Virtual World. You could’ve _not_ gone into the program in the first place. You could’ve done _anything_ but this.”

Kokichi didn’t have a comeback. He could only watch Shuichi walk out of the courtroom by himself. All eyes were on him again. Even Kaito had nothing to say. Kokichi muttered out, “He’s always been such a mood killer,” before he left too.

He let out a scream halfway into the courtyard. The sound reverberated against the dome of the Academy. They were all literally rats stuffed inside of a cage being tortured for somebody’s sick enjoyment. He clawed at his hair. And he made a fucked up situation more fucked up than it ever needed to be.


	3. Endgame, I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ⇄ what can i do to make you love me?
>
>> 3\. endgame, i: _the third and last phase of the game, when there are few pieces left on the board._

>  vii. god: _metaphorically, a hypothetical player who always plays perfectly. such a player’s rating has been estimated to be around 3,600._

One time is chance. Once is happenstance.

But more importantly: Ouma Kokichi wasn’t exactly thinking straight. But when did he ever, right?

Being split wasn’t the best thing. There were splits everywhere. Splits between the skin and nails of his fingertips from pulling at his hair and beating at his own head. Splits in the courtroom whenever the group couldn’t agree on something and Monokuma forced them to duke it out with their podiums going up into the air so they could all just yell at each other twenty feet off the ground. Splits from Rantaro’s skull when Kaede decided to go behind Shuichi’s back – _everyone’s_ backs – and crack it open. Splits from Korekiyo when he removed the mask and revealed the sister that he insisted was living inside of him. Splits from Kaito with his constant irritating “all-or-nothing” perspective. Splits from Shuichi from the way that his lips used to easily split into a smile to how he had split Kokichi apart once in his bedroom and again out in the courtyard in all the right ways to how he would split every single culprit’s lies in half to reveal the truth to how he split Kokichi into pieces in all the wrong ways with his final words before leaving the courtroom.

Shuichi having the audacity to utilize a lie against him – _him_ , Ouma Kokichi, of _all people_ – had made him a little… upset. _A little?_ He nearly tripped over a rock. He couldn’t get into the habit of lying to himself. He was angry, angry enough that his hands were still shaking. He had never in his life felt that angry before. The word “angry” was probably an understatement, but simple words were easier for the cogs of the mind to process when a person is feeling fucked up enough to the point when they can’t even walk in a straight line anymore. He was stumbling through the courtyard to get to where exactly? Did it even matter anymore?

Ah, yes. Of course. He was on his way to Miu’s Research Lab to grab her inventions so that he can start the next phase of his plan: make everyone think that he was the Ringleader.

_Saihara-chan loves his friends more than he could ever love you._

Kokichi halted in his tracks again. Ah, right. He almost forgot a step. How embarrassing would that be? He traced his steps back into the courtyard. It looked like everyone hadn’t left the courtroom yet. They always liked having lengthy discussions about their feelings and promises and friendships and more sappy shit that was just going to be split apart in the next few weeks when yet another murder happened.

Not anymore though. Not on his watch.

Kokichi scrawled out the last letters of his “message” on the stone. This world _was_ going to be his. Starting tonight. He just needed to find his way to Miu’s Research Lab and get the tools he needed. It was that simple.

 _If it’s_ that simple _then why are you going to the dorms?_

Good question. Why _was_ he going to the dormitory? There was no need to go there. He wouldn’t be allowed to sleep amongst everyone anymore with his plan, especially with Shuichi. _Fuck_. Kokichi had been spending the majority of his nights sleeping in Shuichi’s room. His actual room had turned into a landfill really.

Kokichi was already going through the motions of unlocking Shuichi’s door. It was subconscious at this point. If Shuichi went to bed before letting him in, he simply broke in and relocked the door. And thank God (specifically Angie’s) that Shuichi wasn’t in the room because for once Kokichi had nothing to say. No explanation. No comebacks. No quips. No jokes. Nada. He needed time to think. Maybe that’s why he was in Shuichi’s room. Also because he couldn’t think straight. That had everything to do with it really.

“Ooh, an intruder?” Monokuma’s head poked up from the corner of the room. That bear truly did disappear and reappear like it was magic. “No, please don’t attack my poor, supple body while I’m vulnerable and my back is turned!”

“…Shut up.” Kokichi turned on the lights and took another step inside. Monokuma was fiddling with the chessboard that Shuichi had left in his room. He was taking out the bunny pieces and lining them up. “Not like I care, but what are you doing in here?”

“I somehow forgot about my precious Monokid and used this tasteless, washed-up mascot as the rook pieces.” He emphasized his point by crushing the pieces one by one underneath his mechanical paw before he took four new pieces that resembled Monokid out of thin air and began to replace them inside of the chessboard’s case. “Also, if you’re planning on working together again—no dice!—because what just happened was a shit show! I mean, geez, you’re worse than I thought but I guess I can deal with the little bit of a soap opera angle that you and Saihara-kun were giving me in the end. Keep up the drama, it’s what I’m powered on!”

Kokichi resisted the urge to kick Monokuma over. The bastard was literally two feet tall and he was playing with them all like puppets on a string. Then again, what was the point of resisting? Sure, there was a rule in the school regulations that said no violence against Monokuma, but did it matter? If Kokichi kicked Monokuma over and the bear decided to self-destruct and blow him up into a thousand itsy bitsy smithereens, would it matter? No one was going to miss him. He accomplished his goal of making everyone, including Shuichi, hate him. What was the point anymore?

_You have a plan to finish. Who stops at phase one?_

Right, right, right. He needed to stop being stupid and carry his plan out. Monokuma disappeared again. Kokichi scooped up the chessboard. He needed to carry his plan out but maybe not immediately though. There was always tomorrow.

Kokichi headed to his own room.

⁂

Time always stopped in Kaede’s Research Lab. Granted, Shuichi had only visited it only once before, but the effect was still the same. He must have been seated at the piano bench, staring off into space, for hours. It could’ve really been seconds. It could’ve easily been days.

He could hear the murmurings all around him. Whispering, buzzing, zipping this way and that. He figured that he must have truly gone crazy. He swore that he could hear Kaede’s laugh. The kind that was soft and she tried to muffle with her hand because she was laughing at something that she probably shouldn’t have been laughing at. He could hear Rantaro’s thoughtful huffs, Ryouma’s gruff sighs, Kirumi’s dismissive click of the tongue, Angie’s boisterous giggles, Tenko’s flustered shouts, Korekiyo’s sleek utterances, Miu’s mean-spirited snorts, and Gonta’s bemused cries. He could hear them all. If he closed his eyes, he could see them too. He could see what they were during their first few safe weeks together; the versions of them that he had been so desperate to cling onto despite everything.

The voices trickled down into a hum when the door opened.

“Go away… Ouma-kun…” No response. Shuichi opened his eyes and turned his head to see Himiko hunched over in the doorway, trying to catch her breath.

“S-Saihara…!” She tried to straighten up again but ended up hunching right back over. “G-Give me a second, I’m low on… I’m low on HP right now…” She wiped the sweat away from her forehead. “O-Okay… One, two, three,” she breathed in deeply before straightening up again, “Harukawa made everybody go out on a manhunt for you. And she said that once we find you we have to bring you back to the dormitory right away.” Shuichi couldn’t even find it in himself to say anything. He turned his head downwards. “Hey, Saihara…” He heard Himiko take in a deep breath. “I know what it’s like to not want to move around or do anything. I even felt that way before Tenko died too, but… you can’t stay like this, you know? Plus, um, Harukawa made a really scary face when she said to find you, so we should probably go now before she gets even more upset.”

Shuichi got to his feet. It was a slow, automatic response. Did he really want to follow Himiko and go out to meet Maki? He honestly didn’t know. “Thank you,” he murmured. It must have been the standard civilities that were drilled into his mind that made him say that. Himiko seemed happy enough with it though.

“No problem, Saihara.” She flashed him a triumphant smile and put her hands on her hips. “That’s what friends are for, right?”

⁂

Kokichi had to force himself to go to sleep. Was it a daunting task? Yes. Was it something that he hadn’t done in a while? Yes. Was it because of Shuichi? Maybe. Maybe not. He fluffed up his pillow and squeezed his eyes shut before he could answer his own question. There wasn’t much left to do except sleep. His plan was already in place and casually chatting anybody up wasn’t exactly an option. What was he supposed to say? _“Hey guys! Sorry about the Iruma-chan and Gonta dying thing but let’s chitchat about whatever because I’m too out of it to start my Ringleader plan that’s going to break all of your spirits right now!”_ Yeah, Kokichi learned enough about everybody to know that that wouldn’t fly. Not in a million years.

He also knew that fitful sleeps often caused for fitful dreams.

Kokichi found himself at school. _School_ of all the most uninteresting places in the world to dream about. He was bent over his desk in his room furiously writing something. The only source of light was the dim lamp by his elbow.

“It’s White Day, Ouma-kun, are you going to return Saihara-kun’s gift yet?” Kokichi’s ears perked but he didn’t turn around. He figured that Kaede was standing by his side and looking over his shoulder. He dropped his arms over his letter to hide it from her view.

Miu appeared on his opposite side. “Yeah, are ya going to finish your little love letter yet, Shouma?”

“Ugh, don’t you two have something better to do?” He muttered.

“Hm,” arms came out from behind him and grabbed the hand that he was writing with, “this needs… _adjusting_.” The last thing that Kokichi needed to dream about was Korekiyo breathing down his neck. He tried to shake the other boy off, but more and more arms came from behind him. He couldn’t even tell whose hands were holding him down in his seat and who was moving his hand across the paper. He could feel _everyone_ breathing down his neck though. Fourteen against one, why was he always the one on the lesser end of the scale?

“Here, don’t forget to say that you’re stupid,” he heard Maki’s voice say.

“Yeah and don’t forget to say that you’re a useless piece of shit,” Miu said.

“And that you’re as good as a murderer too,” Kaede said.

“Ah, Gonta was just about to say that!” Gonta’s hands must’ve been the ones that were holding him down by the shoulders.

“Don’t forget to say that you don’t deserve Shuichi too,” Kaito said.

Their hands vanished. The finished product of the “love letter” was filled with the nastiest insults. Kokichi was a creature that finessed the art of linguistics. He knew how to make words especially sting and bite and dig directly underneath someone’s skin need be. It was an interesting role reversal to say the least that his style was being used against him. It was a good thing in real life he only allowed one person to even gain the slightest tap into his hidden thoughts because what he was reading over – _man_ , there were some real stingers, he’d admit. He at least had to commend everyone for it, whether or not they were real or fake.

“Nice job ruining my letter guys! I’m sure me and Saihara-chan will get a good laugh out of thi—” God, he shouldn’t have turned around.

Kaede’s neck was blotchy and purple and literally only being held together by a few stray strings of skin. Her body was riddled with holes large enough that Kokichi was sure he could fit both of his arms through them. Rantaro had a gash on the top of his head, like someone had ladled out a good portion of his skull. Ryouma was stripped right down to the skeletal parts. Kirumi’s body was all twisted and tattered. Angie and Tenko were headless. Korekiyo’s eyes were bleeding and his skin was dripping from the bones. Miu’s neck was cinched and her face was tinged blue and her eyes were rolled to the back of her head. Gonta’s skin was charred and his abdomen was cratered. Maki was brandishing knives in both hands. Kaito’s fists were clenched. Kiibo, Tsumugi, and Himiko were staring back at him with expressions that were so twisted that it reminded Kokichi that this was nothing more than a dream. Those three were too soft to be capable of making such horrific faces in real life (at least, he sincerely hoped so).

“Ooh, he’s here,” Kaede said. When she spoke he could see her larynx folding and resonating through her torn throat. The door was creaking open somewhere behind everyone. It was screeching against the floorboards and the group parted right down the middle to make way.

“Hey, Ouma-kun…?”

Kokichi woke up drenched in a cold sweat. There was another knock on his door. It was morning judging from the light that managed to sneak in past the blinds on the window. He wiped off his face and calmed his heart down. What kind of weakling was he to get worked up over some wimpy nightmare? He sat up and something fell into his lap. A pen and a letter already sealed inside of an envelope.

“Ouma-kun, I know you’re in there.” There was another knock. Kokichi threw on his jacket and tucked the letter into his pocket before he answered the door. Shuichi’s eyebrow was quirked but he didn’t seem too upset. It wasn’t like him to get upset easily though, Kokichi didn’t know why he was expecting him to be mad. He hadn’t done anything wrong, had he…? “Is there something wrong, Ouma-kun?”

“What type of question is that? Does it look like there’s something wrong with me?” Kokichi cocked his head to the side. “This face is too cute to have issues on it, Saihara-chan, are you making fun of me?” He willed up some tears. “Even Saihara-chan is bullying me! How cruel can the world get?!”

“N-No, I didn’t mean that! You texted me yesterday to meet you in your room before class because you wanted to give me something.” _What_? Was it the letter or something else? “Are you going to finally give me my hat back? You stole it a week ago and, um, I’d be happy if you gave it back.” Kokichi looked around his room. The infamous hat was on his desk. He picked it up and put it on himself.

“Too bad, it’s mine now! It looks better on me anyway.” He tossed it back into his room before Shuichi could even try to grab it. “Isn’t class starting soon? You should escort me there, Saihara-chan.”

“O-Okay.” Shuichi started down the hallway first and was a few steps ahead of Kokichi as they walked.

The hallway seemed to stretch on forever and ever. Class would’ve surely started by then, but it wasn’t like Kokichi was a stranger to being fashionably late. He moved his arms behind his head and slowed his stride to a stroll to match Shuichi’s nonchalant pace. The taller boy was still three or four steps ahead of him and for some reason Kokichi couldn’t keep up. He kept a controlled expression on his face though. There was no point in getting frustrated over such a little thing. It wasn’t like they weren’t going to the same place anyway. Kokichi re-familiarized himself with Shuichi’s back in the meantime; with how now he had to comb his hair now that his hat was gone, how his jacket fit snuggly around his shoulders but not around his torso, how the bottom of his shoes didn’t even squeak against the waxed floors – his footfalls were always so silent.

“Are you ready for class today, Ouma-kun?”

Kokichi shrugged even though he knew that Shuichi wasn’t facing him. “I dunno. Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess. You know, the Ultimate Supreme Leader doesn’t need something as boring and worthless as school. I have a seven-point-oh GPA. I just come here for fun at this point.”

“Oh, yeah? So you consider this fun?”

“Mhm! School is fun, talking to Saihara-chan is fun, drinking Panta is fun, and scaring Shirogane-chan is fun!”

“Oh.” Shuichi chuckled. “I thought you would say ‘killing is fun’ too.”

“…What?”

“I mean,” he shrugged; Kokichi’s eyes traced over how the muscles in his shoulders tensed up, it was visible through his jacket, “we all know what’s fun to you: pranking, lying, manipulating,”—his voice dropped—“ _killing_.”

“…I think Saihara-chan should stop talking.”

“S-Sorry!” His voice returned to its normal tone and he waved his hand behind him. He wasn’t even as much as sparing a glance at Kokichi. His eyes were glued forward on whatever was at the end of the goddamn never-ending hallway. “But anyway, I figured out what you wanted to tell me so badly.”

“And what would that be?” Kokichi would like to know too. The letter was burning a hole in his pocket.

“You texted me yesterday to come to your room because you wanted to tell me something, right? You want to tell me something important, but because you’re so weak-willed and can’t ever say things directly, you decided to write it in a letter to give to me today. But that’s okay, because I already figured out what you wanted to tell me.”

_I’m going to have to end our relationship because I’m going to try to bring an end to the killing game._

Shit.

“Hey, Saihara-chan!” He forced out a laugh. It was so strained that it made his toes curl. “Déjà vu, much? You’re ripping me off and plagiarism is, like, totally not cool. Hurry up and come up with your own original strategy before I get upset with you again.”

“I mean, I’ve been thinking about it and I just can’t figure it out. What’s the point of writing a confession to someone who could never fall in love with someone like you?”

“Okay, what the fuck are you talking abo—?” Kokichi was tugged forward suddenly. He nearly fell to the ground. There was a red string tied to his pinky finger and it trailed all the way up and down the hallway even though the end was connected to Shuichi.

Before Kokichi could even think about pulling the string off, he heard footsteps coming from beside him. Korekiyo must have materialized from the side of the hall because there weren’t any doors that Kokichi could see. A pair of scissors twirled around his bandage-wrapped fingertips as he approached the two of them. “The power of love is truly a beautiful thing,” he mumbled. He took a few slow steps toward Kokichi and Kokichi couldn’t even move out of the way, his legs were forcing him to continue walking at the same steady pace – and Kokichi wanted nothing more than to bolt from a pissed off, bloody eyed, leaky skin version of Korekiyo holding a large pair of sharpened, traditional scissors. “And to discover it condensing and evaporating in such a desperate and perilous time in such a disorderly environment and game that we all have been forced to play is truly— _interesting_.”

Good thing the power preventing Kokichi from being able to control his legs didn’t have any jurisdiction over his mouth. “Shinguji-chan~! How about you go back to where you came from, yeah? I’m sure that Hell is splendid this time of year! And make sure you bring an extra jacket with you too before you go, I heard it gets super-duper chilly.”

“The Red String of Fate may tangle and stretch and bend”—oh, so Kokichi was going to be ignored, _great_ —“but I guess I must conclude that it does indeed break under certain places, times, and circumstances…” He stepped in between the two boys, swiftly cut the string in between them, and he was gone.

Something in Kokichi’s chest was beginning to split.

He pinched at his cheeks to get away from the feeling. He even slapped his cheeks and hit his knees but he wasn’t waking up and his legs were still carrying him forward. He could feel the fray ends of the red string brush against his ankles.

“Ah, we’re here,” Shuichi announced. Finally, they reached the end of the hall. Shuichi opened the door and let himself in. Kokichi huffed as he moved his arms to let himself in. Dream Shuichi was more annoying than Real Shuichi.

They entered into an area that had the same suspicious layout as the courtroom with its checkered floors and infinity ceiling, but the podiums was replaced with a table that was separated by dividers. It was the setup for kreigspiel chess, Kokichi was well aware. It was a variant of chess where the players were separated by dividers and everything became a guessing game. Kokichi’s legs walked him to one end of the table as Shuichi sat down at the other. A chess board emerged in front of Kokichi with his side of the pieces already set up. When he moved his hand to attempt to knock it off the table, he found that it had been handcuffed to the table leg.

Kreigspiel chess involved an umpire that sat in the middle so they could see both of the players’ boards and simply informed the players whether or not the move that wanted to make was illegal or not. There was no umpire here. Kokichi was being forced to play a game that he had absolutely no chance in winning.

So, for the first time of his life, Ouma Kokichi lost a game of chess.

“The winner gets to ask the loser a question and the loser has to answer with complete honesty,” Shuichi said. Kokichi wished he could see him. Dream time seemed long and for the majority of it Shuichi’s face had obstructed from his view. “Ouma-kun, you’re so selfish. Why don’t you have any consideration for other people?”

Kokichi slammed his hands on the table. “I have nothing _but_ consideration for other people! I think about these idiots all the time. I wouldn’t be doing this plan to end this game if I didn’t have any consideration for...” He let himself trail off. The point of this dream – this _nightmare_ – was to get him worked up, and Kokichi wasn’t a fan of losing. He settled back into his seat and cleared his throat. “How about another game, Saihara-chan?”

He lost again.

“Do you think that the real Saihara Shuichi is going to forgive you after this?”

“I don’t care about what he thinks.” Kokichi waved his handcuffed hand in the air. “Stupid concepts like ‘forgiveness’ are forgone in this Killing School Semester.”

“…You broke the rules.”

“Which one? I break a lot of rules, so you’re going to have to refresh my memory.”

“You must answer the question with complete honesty. You broke that rule.”

Kokichi shrugged. “And what are you going to do about it?”

Both of Kokichi’s hands were handcuffed. Shuichi, the chess boards, and dividers disappeared. His fellow gruesome classmates from earlier made a reappearance. Maki’s knives were poised right above his neck and more hands were coming towards him, ready to swoop in for the kill.

Kokichi woke up again with his chest heaving but he immediately calmed himself down. He always lied down as still as possible whenever he slept because if he moved or thrashed around in his sleep, which typically happened when he got nightmares, he would wake up with sleep paralysis. And the _last thing_ he wanted was to be caged to his bed and his body while he was alone. Sleeping with Shuichi didn’t exactly make the nightmares go away, but it was a reminder that someone was there when he woke up. That the etches of anxious shadows that his mind fooled him with would fade away soon; they were temporary while the body next to him was permanent.

Once Kokichi’s heart calmed down, he rummaged through a pile on his floor to pull out the notebook that Shuichi had gotten him during the second week or so of Kokichi’s semi-permanent sleeping arrangement in Shuichi’s bed. Shuichi had said that maybe writing his dreams down could help ease the nightmares some, but it didn’t. Kokichi kept the notebook for miscellaneous reasons anyway (and because it initially smelled like Shuichi). Fleeting thoughts were scattered throughout it and now he was scrawling his latest nightmare down. He realized that there was most likely no point to doing such a thing when he was halfway through, but you never know. Maybe the dream could’ve been taken as a sign that everyone truly was connected together in the past somehow.

Kokichi shut the notebook and threw it on his bed. That thought didn’t exactly make him feel better.

⁂

“Ta-da!” Himiko heaved out a breath as she tried to excitedly hold her arms up. She coughed and held her finger up instead. “O-One second… I underestimated my amount of HP again.” Maki only stared on as Himiko took a moment to re-catch her breath. She had insisted on getting Shuichi to Maki as soon as possible even at the cost of her low stamina. “Okay, we’re back on track,” Himiko said once she straightened up again. “Even though I don’t have a broom and my familiar is a tiger instead of a black cat, Himiko’s Delivery Service never fails. Presenting: Saihara!” Himiko grandly gestured toward Shuichi. Shuichi didn’t say anything. Maki didn’t say anything. “Um… Is my MP low too? What a lukewarm response.”

“Yumeno,” Maki said, “go find the robot and Shirogane and tell them that you found Saihara.” Himiko slouched over again.

“Fine,” she sighed. She made her way back to the entryway of the dormitory. “It’s just two people, shouldn’t be too hard,” she murmured to herself. “Even though there are a thousand floors in this Academy…”

Maki reverted back to her quiet state once the sound of Himiko’s shoes clacking against the floor went off into the distance. Shuichi couldn’t hold her gaze. She wasn’t glaring at him, just looking at him with that expression she always had when she was expecting something. Her shoulders were in their typical taunt position and her eyebrow was quirked. There was something weary about her eyes though. And Shuichi, in his attempt to avoid her burning stare, looked down at the ground and spotted stains on her boots. Bloodstains.

“It’s Momota’s.” Maki turned and walked up the stairs. Shuichi took it as his cue to follow after her. “I had to walk him to his room from the courtroom because he started coughing up blood after you left.” She said it in her common cool tone yet she bit her lip. She opened up his door.

“You… left his door unlocked?” Maki scoffed.

“I always leave the doors unlocked.”

“But what if someone—?”

“I dare someone to.”

Kaito’s room was dark, but Shuichi could see the full picture when the light of the dormitory poured in. Kaito was in bed, surrounded by bloodied tissues and a wastebasket. He looked too enfeebled to even insist that he was “fine” anymore. His skin was flushed and faded into a nearly anemic hue. He didn’t even react when the door opened. Not a jerk of the eyes, not a flinch.

Shuichi was snapped out of his observation from Maki’s voice. “I’m keeping watch over the both of you tonight.” It didn’t seem like it was something up for discussion.

Shuichi wasn’t sure what to do. He obviously couldn’t sit on the bed, and sitting on the floor didn’t seem like a good idea either. He decided to stand just at the foot of Kaito’s bed so that he could face both Kaito and Maki. Maki was too busy pacing back and forth across the room to focus on him though.

“Due to my talent, I lack the knowledge on what’s wrong with people when they’re _alive_.” Her acknowledgement was slow and she didn’t at all try to hide the fact that she was irked. In an ironic twist, Shuichi was the same. The Ultimate Detective and the Ultimate Assassin were both aces when it came to the dead, not so much the living. “I wish he didn’t keep this a secret from us. We could’ve helped him before it got like this.” She tossed an indifferent glare toward Kaito’s resting form. “This is so stupid,” she sighed, “I seriously considered going to the robot for help before I remembered that he has the same level of intelligence as the rest of us, so I doubt he’ll know what to do.” She stopped her pacing in the center of the room. “We have to get out of here—now.” Shuichi’s mind was still a little out of order. It took him a moment to process that Maki didn’t mean they needed to get out of the room, they needed to get out of the Academy. Obviously there was no one medically skilled among them. Kaito needed professional help and he wasn’t going to get it as long as walls still separated them from the outside world.

Coughing. Shuichi’s head whipped toward Kaito. Maki was quick to press a tissue against his mouth to collect the blood. The tissues surrounding him weren’t just freckled with specks of blood, they were _soaked_. Shuichi could only imagine what was inside of the wastebasket. “S-Shuichi’s… here?” Kaito’s voice had been stripped of all of its vitality. It made Shuichi’s toes curl. “H-Harumaki?” Maki tossed the tissue on the floor.

“What is it?”

“W-What’s Shuichi doin’ here? He wasn’t here before… right…?” Kaito was still dazed. His eyes were too glazed over to even focus properly on Shuichi. He was probably seeing him but not seeing him at the same time.

Maki closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. “You don’t remember? When I first put you to bed I told you that I was sending Kiibo, Shirogane, and Yumeno out to look for Saihara because I didn’t want him to be alone.”

“You…” Kaito’s eyes drooped shut. “I thought… you were friends, Harumaki. You don’t… trust him? Why…?”

“It doesn’t matter if I do,” Maki grumbled. “He just shouldn’t be alone right now just in case he does something crazy.”

“Shuichi… wouldn’t kill someone…” Kaito looked like he had already drifted back into sleep.

“I never said I thought he would hurt someone else,” Maki still said. She looked directly at Shuichi when she reopened her eyes. The words went unsaid, but Shuichi understood. She thought that he was going to hurt himself.

“Have…” Shuichi cleared his throat. “Have you seen Ouma-kun anywhere?”

“I don’t care about that bastard. I wouldn’t waste the energy looking for him after the shit he just put us through with Gokuhara.”

“M-Maybe I should go find him then. It probably isn’t a good idea to leave him alone right now.” Maki only looked at him. Shuichi took a step toward the door. Her head followed his movements. He felt like a gazelle being preyed under the hungry gaze of a lioness. “I-I’ll see you later, Harukawa-san…?” Shuichi didn’t mean for his words to come out as a question. It should’ve been absurd that he was waiting for permission from Maki to leave but she had claimed her reign over all for now. She spoke as Shuichi unsteadily reached for the doorknob.

“If you don’t come back within an hour, I’m going after you.”

“I-I promise to be back in an hour then.” Maki turned her back to him and gave her undivided attention to Kaito once more.

⁂

Kokichi set his Kubs Pad beside his notebook. He looked at his whiteboard in an attempt to not think about the video. He hadn’t updated the words on the board in a few weeks but he still rearranged the pictures as deaths continued to toll. When he first entered his room he had moved Gonta’s picture beside Miu’s (he had already moved Miu’s picture to the left side where the dead resided before he had entered the Virtual World) and sketched out a drawing of toilet paper in between them.

Shuichi’s picture always caught his eye whenever he looked at the board. He still remembered during the early days of being inside the Academy when he had moved Shuichi’s picture off to be on a group by himself, neither among the dead on the left side or the living in the middle, but in a league of his own on the right with the word “trustworthy?” captioned underneath him. The word “suspicious” was still beside Maki’s picture when he had discovered her true talent and the word “weird” was still underneath Kiibo’s picture from after their first few talks together and Kokichi managed to easily pry into the robot. “Suspicious,” “weird,” and “trustworthy” with a question mark were the only words he had for his fellow inmates during their first few weeks of entrapment. Did he still think the same way though?

Yes. Sort of. Kiibo _was_ weird, but not in a robot-killer-transformer-gundam-x type way (yet). Maki _was_ suspicious. The girl tried to strangle him in front of an audience before. But Shuichi… Kokichi tried to brush it off. He had moved the detective’s picture aside and branded it with such a gross, cheesy description because he had fallen in love with Shuichi’s mouth, not the rest of his looks, not his personality, not his conversations – nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

_Do you find him trustworthy now then?_

A knock on the door stopped Kokichi was answering his own question. It couldn’t be anyone else but Shuichi, but it still didn’t make any sense. They left on an extremely sour note and the word “sour” didn’t cover the half of it.

“I can see that the light is on…” Shuichi’s voice sounded like it had been hollowed out. Kokichi winced and bit at the nail of his thumb as he approached his door. If he let Shuichi in then he was surely going to use his stupid detective brain to put two and two together and see that he was up to something. He literally had weeks upon weeks of planning scattered all over his floor. And Kokichi figured that if he talked to him for too long then there was a chance (he told himself that it was a small chance, but he couldn’t even pretend to believe it) that he would spill the beans on his plan. The most logical thing to do was not to answer and let Shuichi go away.

Yet a small voice in the back of Kokichi’s mind whispered that it was going to be the last night where he was still somewhat Kokichi and Shuichi was still somewhat Shuichi. Everything was going to change tomorrow once he usurped the Ringleader from their title and of their game.

 _Fine, fine_. Kokichi could do compromises. He sat down against the door. “What do you want, Saihara-chan? I’m really busy right now.”

“I want to understand what happened.” He was being pretty outright, which was something Shuichi did when he was tired, frustrated, or both. “ _Please_ , just tell me.” Ouma Kokichi was Ouma Kokichi, and the thing that everyone knew about Ouma Kokichi was that he couldn’t just _tell_ anyone anything. He didn’t operate like that. He was the walking definition of beating around the bush.

“Let’s play Twenty Questions then. I know Saihara-chan would be good at that game.” Twenty Questions was all about deductive reasoning, Shuichi’s strong suit. Maybe he could get the gain that he wanted out of the situation if he agreed. Kokichi didn’t have to see Shuichi to just know that he was probably tapping his fingers along his bottom lip, contemplating.

Shuichi leaned against the door. “A rule of Twenty Questions is that the answerer has to be honest.” Kokichi didn’t respond. “And, um, the only words that you can respond with are ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘I don’t know,’ and ‘irrelevant.’ You can say ‘irrelevant’ if you feel like the question is straying away from the true answer. And you can’t say ‘maybe’ because that could be—”

“Too wishy-washy? I love wishy-washy, though.”

“Y-Yeah, I know… So how about it?”

“Was that your first question?”

“N-No.”

“Well, hurry up then! Don’t make the game boring before it can even begin.”

“Okay, um…” He cleared his throat and switched what Kokichi labeled as his “detective voice,” when his voice would get just the slightest bit deeper and his stammers and pauses would become few and far between and the motions of his lips somehow became a step above mesmerizing to downright hypnotizing. (Being held spellbound in the courtroom from Shuichi’s cross-examinations was admittedly not Kokichi’s brightest moments.) “Did you want Gonta-kun to die?”

“No.”

“Have you been secretly working together with Iruma-san?”

“Ye—actually, irrelevant.”

“Did you want Iruma-san to die?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did y—?”

“No.”

“Huh?”

“I’m changing that ‘I don’t know’ to a ‘no.’”

“Ah, okay… Did you deliberately seek out Gonta-kun to manipulate?”

“Yes.”

“If you didn’t realize Iruma-san’s plan would you have planned to kill her anyway?”

“No.”

“Did you think of any other solutions to the problem after you discovered Iruma-san’s plan?”

“Yes.”

“Would you have killed her yourself if Gonta-kun was unavailable and there were no restrictions on your avatar?”

“No, I wouldn’t have.” The sudden chilled undertone to his voice made Shuichi’s ears perk up.

“Would you have killed Iruma-san yourself outside of the Virtual World?”

“No.”

“Hypothetically speaking, if you had killed Iruma-san would you have tried to get away with it in the class trial?”

“…No.”

“Hm... Would you have not tried to get away with it because you don’t want to sacrifice everyone to escape?”

“…Yes.”

“So you would have allowed everyone to discover that you are the Blackened and be executed?”

“…I don’t know.” _Bingo_. The keyword seemed to be “executed.” So Kokichi wouldn’t try to get away with his crime because he did not want to sacrifice everyone but he grew wary at the idea of execution? Shuichi tapped his finger against his chin.

“Were you scared that Iruma-san was going to kill you?”

“Yes.”

“Before Gonta-kun was executed, were you telling the truth that you wanted to be executed alongside him?”

“…I don’t know.” Shuichi had been listening to Kokichi back then? Kokichi thought that the other had been ignoring him up until he chewed him up and spit him out before leaving the courtroom.

“Were you crying genuine tears before and during Gonta-kun’s execution?”

“…Yes.”

“Before we logged out of the Virtual World, were your words to me a part of your plan?”

“…Yes.”

“Were your words a lie?”

“No.”

“If I was not in the killing game and you had killed Iruma-san yourself, would you have tried to get away with it during the class trial?”

“…No.”

“Do you not like murder under any circumstances?”

“Yes. Or no? As in I don’t or whatever.”

“Were the deaths of Iruma-san and Gonta-kun what you consider a ‘last resort’?”

“Yes.”

“Do you regret your plan?”

“…Yes.”

Shuichi stopped talking. Without thinking about it, Kokichi followed the urge to turn around and face the door and say, “You know you’re allowed to ask a minimum of five more questions if you can’t figure out the answer or you could give up.”

“Right… Okay.” Kokichi heard a sigh. “Did you really think that I would support this plan?”

“…I don’t know—no.”

“Did you misunderstand what I meant when I said that I considered you different than my friends here?”

“I don’t know…? Irrelevant, I guess.”

“Did it ever cross your mind that you would deeply hurt me from your plan?”

“…Yes.”

“Did you ever want to tell me about your plan?”

“No.”

“Do you still want to end the killing game?”

“Yes.”

“I think I understand a little better now.” It suddenly connected in Kokichi’s mind that Shuichi’s voice held the same resonance as it did after the first trial. It was the same broken tone from that night when Kokichi had snuck into his room to find Shuichi curled up underneath his blanket and all Kokichi could do was rub his hand over his back because he was Ouma Kokichi and he didn’t do comfort in the way that everyone else did comfort but he still tried. It was a memory that he shoved out of his head the next day. If not for that then he would’ve made such a connection within seconds. A slow brewing realization was always the worst. It always crept up from behind and sunk in during the vulnerable minutes of immobility after sunup.

Kokichi wanted to do something stupid. He actually wanted to open the door. Which was against all the principles that his rational brain was supplying him: Shuichi most likely didn’t want to touch him with a ten-foot pole right now and letting him in would cause even more problems. But his hand was still on the doorknob, just resting there, waiting for _something_. Anything.

“I gather that your motive was an extreme case of a deadly combination of paranoia and distrust. I figure that you didn’t do something ‘obvious’ like trying to talk to Iruma-san or anyone else and not going into the Virtual World because you didn’t trust her to not only kill you but someone else too. But…” His voice dropped to a whisper. Kokichi pressed his ear against the door to catch every word. “But I don’t like this theory because then that means that… you didn’t trust me either, because you didn’t want to tell me anything too… And you using Gonta-kun was not only a tactic to avoid killing because you are against it but it was also a way for you to avoid the risk of dying or sacrificing everyone else. You took your version of a ‘middle-of-the-road’ solution and employed Gonta-kun against Iruma-san.” His voice picked back up again. “Was I right, Ouma-kun?”

“Yay, Saihara-chan is _totally_ right!” Since when did it get tiring to pretend to sound happy? “Amazing deductive skills from the Ultimate Detective, as expected.”

“Thank you.” There as no stammer yet it wasn’t the “detective voice.” It was just a statement with no substance. A beat passed. And then a minute. And Kokichi grew concerned. It would make sense for Shuichi to leave after getting the information that he wanted. Yet he still found his hand turning the knob and opening the door just a crack to peep out into the hall. 

Kokichi could just spy Shuichi out of his peripheral. He was walking to the left. He was probably heading to his room like Kokichi had guessed. Ah, no. He completely skipped over the stairs and was passing by Kiibo’s room. The room next to Kiibo’s was Kaito’s. Kokichi couldn’t see it but he could hear a knock on the door and it swing open. Whisperings. The other voice wasn’t deep enough to be Kaito’s. Maki. How annoying. Kokichi had to strain his ears to catch bits and pieces of their conversation:

“—in his room—”

“—leave the door open in case that bastard tries to do something—”

“—unnecessary. I’ll be fine—”

Eavesdropping was an art in itself and people deciding to whisper when Kokichi wasn’t conveniently close enough to hear properly was one of the worse things in the world, but he caught the gist. He could clearly hear the door close again and Shuichi’s footsteps heading back in his direction. Kokichi closed his own door as softly as possible.

Shuichi knocked again. “Can I come in?”

“Nope.” Kokichi had to will his hand off of the doorknob. “Saihara-chan would be more comfortable in his own room, so he should go over there now and stop bothering me.”

“I-I can’t leave you alone. We both know that, Ouma-kun. I’ll stay out here all night if I have to.” He didn’t sound too sure of himself, but Kokichi believed him. If Shuichi followed him around all night and into tomorrow, then the Ringleader takeover plan was shot. The panacea was cutting Shuichi off. Permanently. Right then and there. But a million things were holding him back including the small voice in the back of mind still whispering that it was their last night together.

Kokichi looked around his room. The “trustworthy?” underneath Shuichi’s picture looked back at him along with Shuichi’s hat on his nightstand that he had stolen a few days after Shuichi decided to stop wearing it and the chessboard resting against the foot of his bed too. If those items held longing gazes then the boxes and blueprints and scattered papers and notebook held scorching stares. “My room is too messy and I don’t want Saihara-chan to get lost in a pile of trash.” Speaking of trash, Kokichi crawled over to a particular pile of notes and began to rummage through them.

“It’s really fine. What your room looks like doesn’t matter to me.”

Kokichi pocketed the slip of paper that he wanted. “Maybe it would be a better idea if we went somewhere else instead. Who wants to hang out in my room anyway?”

“Ouma-kun are you… are you hiding something in there? Or have you… done something to yourself?”

“No.”

“Prove it.”

 _Whoa_.

Kokichi swung the door open and put his disorderly room on full display. He figured that Shuichi was too far away to grasp anything that was written on any of the papers and there were too many to soak in to even attempt to anyway.

Shuichi’s eyes immediately locked on to his. Shuichi had refused to meet his eyes once he reached the verdict during the class trial. Him doing it now at such close range was _totally not overwhelming_ and was _not at all_ the reason why Kokichi refocused his eyes on the buttons of Shuichi’s jacket.

“Um, Ouma-kun?” Did Shuichi want him to look him in the eye again? No dice. “I, um, don’t know how to feel right now. At least I can say that I can think a little… better, but I can’t forgive your decision.”

_“Do you think that the real Saihara Shuichi is going to forgive you after this?”_

“B-But,” he clutched at his chest and Kokichi was forced to redirect his eyes again, “if I worked harder to earn your trust, t-then maybe you would’ve talked to me and not gone down this route—”

“We should have tea party.” Kokichi didn’t even feel the urge to relish in Shuichi’s surprised expression. His back was turned and he was already heading downstairs.

⁂

Shuichi leaned against the kitchen counter as he watched Kokichi brew tea.

Nothing about that even sounded right or real.

Shuichi was beginning to seriously think that at any moment he was going to wake up against the piano in Kaede’s Research Lab. He was even tempted to pinch his cheeks. But no, it was real. Kokichi kept glancing at a note that he had taken out of his pocket every now as he gathered supplies. It was a stark contrast to a few months prior when Kokichi was leaning against the counter watching Shuichi bake a cake. That memory held nothing but warm feelings. Shuichi had spent weeks gathering up enough courage to go out on a whim and couldn’t even begin to describe how happy he was to not have been wrong about Kokichi returning his feelings.

Back then, a silence had linked them filled with the restless weight that reciprocated affections always brought. Now, silence injected with something unnameable partitioned them. 

Kokichi set the note he was looking over on the counter as he got to work. Shuichi eyed it over. It was Kirumi’s handwriting (Shuichi recognized it because he remembered how impressed he was by her calligraphy when he read over the recipe for sponge cake that she had given to them) and a sheet from the notepad that she had always carried around. Instructions on how to brew oolong tea was written. “Ouma-kun,” Shuichi called out. Kokichi quickly glanced at him as he set a pot of water to boil. “How did you get something from Tojo-san’s notebook?”

Kokichi turned his head away and began to measure out the tea leaves. “It’s a long, boring story.”

“We have all night.” Shuichi set the paper down and leaned against the counter again.

“Ugh…” Kokichi poured the leaves out into a teapot. “I noticed that Saihara-chan was being boring when Tojo-chan was making tea for everybody during our first week together. You see,” he poured the hot water into the teapot, “fun people like myself, Akamatsu-chan, Angie-chan, Iruma-chan, Amami-chan, and Chabashira-chan all wanted boba tea.” “Fun” people? All of the names that Kokichi listed, except for himself, were people that were gone. “Mediocre people like Tojo-chan herself, Yumeno-chan, Hoshi-chan, and Shirogane-chan all had ginger tea. Indecisive freaks like Harukawa-chan had boba _and_ oolong tea. Flakes that didn’t want tea were Momota-chan who just had water, Shinguji-chan that always ate and drank weirdly named things like ‘Cleopatra’s Pearl Cocktail,’ and Gonta who had apples cut into bunny ears or whatever. Weirdoes like Kiibaby just sat and watched everybody.” Kokichi replaced the teapot’s lid. “And then boring people like Saihara-chan wanted oolong tea.”

“I… can’t believe that you remembered what everybody had for Tojo-san’s tea time during our first week together.” Shuichi tried to think back. What everyone was doing was clouded over. He really just remembered talking to Kaede and noticing that Kokichi kept glancing at him from the corner of his eye.

“I’m secretly the Ultimate Eidetic Remember-er, so,” Kokichi shrugged. “I asked Tojo-chan how to make it and she wrote it down for me. Too bad I never got a chance to make my beloved Saihara-chan’s favorite tea during a happy time. I have to do for a shitty time instead.” He shrugged again. “Ugh, this is annoying. It’s taking forever.” He lifted the lid on the teapot and closed it again.

“You _did_ just set it a few seconds ago.” Kokichi had been impatient when they had baked their cake – and Kokichi wasn’t even doing anything.

“Yeah, and? It’s still taking too long. I could’ve just made instant tea but I can only have the crème de la crème being the Ultimate Supreme Leader and all. You know that.” He checked the teapot again. “Finally. Geez, it took like six trillion years.”

Their conversation was bare-boned. Shuichi was the apprehensive Ultimate Detective – but his words had lost their typical timid edge and hung in the air awkwardly, as if a square peg was being put into a round hole. Kokichi was the trickster Ultimate Supreme Leader – but his words had lost their typical punch and fell out of the air easily, as if a balloon blown with oxygen was trying to compete against a balloon blown with helium. And Kokichi’s hands trembled when he poured out two cups of tea. Such a thing would’ve been unnoticeable if it wasn’t for the clank when he set the teapot back on the counter. Shuichi frowned to himself. Kokichi wouldn’t have this impromptu “tea party” for no reason. After giving Shuichi a teacup, Kokichi hopped up on the kitchen’s island and took a seat with his own cup.

Shuichi took a slow sip of his tea. His eyes widened. It was good enough to rival Kirumi’s (then again, it technically _was_ Kirumi’s). “Ouma-kun, thank you. This is, um, actually pretty good.”

“‘Actually’? Psh, that’s not a compliment.” He took a sip of his tea too. “Wanna know the secret ingredient? It’s my spit.”

“Ouma-kun, you know I wouldn’t care if you spit in this, right?”

“Yes you would. If you refuse to clean the toilet then you should be scared of spit too, right? I didn’t know that Saihara-chan was such a germophobe. It’s sad, really.”

“Ah, no.” Shuichi took another sip of his drink. “It’s because of, um, well… you know…”

“No, I don’t think I do know.”

“I’ve, um…” This was ridiculous. Shuichi stifled an uncontrollable smile behind the back of his hand. “I’ve had worse from you than your spit, you know?”

“Ooh?” Kokichi actually _laughed_. He actually laughed _under his breath_. Shuichi was really about to pinch his cheeks now. “Saihara-chan is weeeird.” Shuichi looked down.

“I mean…” Shuichi caught his reflection in the teacup. God, he looked bad. Kokichi did too. _Everyone_ did. “H-Have you been sleeping lately?”

“I sleep more than twenty hours a day so I’m perfectly fine. What, do I look tired or something?” Kokichi poked at his cheeks. It only emphasized the signs of fatigue that loitered about his face and the fact that his eyes would dart away whenever Shuichi tried to make eye contact.

“Well, we usually go to bed when nighttime starts and get up when it ends, so that’s from ten to eight o’clock. That’s a minimum of less than eleven hours but you tend to wake up a lot during the night and sometimes you will be gone before I wake up, so—even less than that.”

“I took a sweet nap earlier so no need to worry about me.” A “sweet” nap? Did Kokichi have another nightmare or waken up with sleep paralysis without him? Strange how Shuichi still felt the urge to be there for him. Shouldn’t it have gone away? _Why should it go away?_ Shuichi reached for his teacup again but there was no more tea left.

Shuichi traced his finger around the rim of the cup. He heard Kokichi set his own cup down. “I, um… It would be easier if I could just think of you as some type of irrational, spiteful person with… with persecutory delusions or something, but… I can’t because it’s not true. Fear really does make people do crazy things. I mean,” Shuichi stopped his movements, “Akamatsu-san with Amami-kun, Tojo-san with Hoshi-kun, Gonta-kun with Iruma-san—and I don’t consider any of them bad people. I-In fact, Akamtasu-san, Tojo-san, and Gonta-kun had been nothing but kind to me during our time together. A-A-And I consider you the same, Ouma-kun, but… I don’t know, maybe it’s because you’re still here? I don’t know if that makes sense but maybe you still being alive and being the closest person to me is what makes it different. It’s just…” Shuichi grasped his hand over his chest. “It’s just crushing that you would do that with Gonta-kun and Iruma-san.” He could feel tears pooling up in his eyes and getting caught in his eyelashes and it was so pitiful. He was so bad at words and they were just spilling out over what? “I’m just—I’m just so tired of people _dying_ ,” Shuichi gasped out. “Just—you could’ve died, but Gonta-kun and Iruma-san died. And I understand why now but I can’t agree with it and j-just… what is it about _me_ that I can’t connect to people correctly? If Akamatsu-san had truly trusted me then she wouldn’t have tried to kill the Ringleader, she would’ve just trusted our plan. If you had really trusted me then you would’ve gone to me and we could’ve worked together to stop Irum—”

“I don’t trust anyone _but_ Saihara-chan.” Shuichi tried to wipe his tears away to see Kokichi clearly. “I had to put a stop to Iruma-chan because she didn’t want to kill me specifically, she wanted to kill—and by no means necessary am I going to let someone get killed if I can help it. Especially you. It wasn’t just limited to the Virtual World either. She was desperate to escape after that last Flashback Light, remember?”

“ _Still_ , we could’ve done something where no one had to die.” Shuichi’s vision blurred again. “All Gonta-kun ever wanted to do was help everyone and you manipulated that trait against him.”

“I think everyone is forgetting about the fact that Gonta is his own person.” Kokichi’s voice seeped into a softer tone, “I didn’t force him to do anything. I came up with the plan and he carried it through out of his own freewill.” Kokichi recognized the seedlings that sprouted a conversation that went around in circles. He had freewill too. He could go at any time he wanted – it was purely the fact that it was “the last night” that was stopping him. Did Shuichi even see him as Kokichi anymore? If the answer was no then that was both a blessing and a curse. It would be easier to conduct his plan but for some dumb reason he didn’t want the other to have a shoddy opinion of him.

Shuichi was still trying to dry his tears away but the endeavor looked like it was fruitless and it was a hard sight to see, so Kokichi stopped looking. “Momota-kun is sick too, and Harukawa-san is taking care of him.” That explained why Maki was in Kaito’s room at least. “Every time we finally get over something, something else happens. It’s thi—This killing game, it brings on t-this deadly cycle. Why can’t we break out of it?”

“We will break out of it…” _because I have a plan_. Shit, what would happen if Kokichi shared his plan with Shuichi? He knew the answer the moment he finalized his plan to eliminate Miu. Shuichi was the only person that could make his mind dare to question itself. _That’s_ why he had to cut ties with everyone, especially Shuichi, in order for everything to work. Just being with Shuichi was starting to put doubts into his head, but it was too late. Using Gonta as a patsy solidified everyone’s hate for him – but not Shuichi for some reason. If anyone was an idiot, it was Shuichi.

If Kokichi thought that life was difficult before, it was grueling now – and he was still in phase one (planting the seeds of hate) of his plan. What would phase two (stealing the title of Ringleader) and the optional but not optimal phase three (using his own life to uproot the game) seem like? If willingly forcing himself to stay in a conversation that was going nowhere felt like this, then what would the commencement of phase two be like? If just hearing Shuichi cry was making his skin crawl, then what would having to watch the light leave everyone’s eyes as he purposely broke them be like? 

The only sounds in the kitchen soon became Shuichi’s quiet cries and Kokichi’s fingers tapping against the counter. Kokichi slid his cup to the end of the island. “Saihara-chan, here.” Shuichi looked lost, like his mind was a step behind for once, as his watery eyes bounced back and forth between Kokichi and the teacup. Shuichi wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve before he walked over. Kokichi held his knees up to his chest as he watched Shuichi drink from the opposite end of the island and, for once, he didn’t have a plan. He crawled over to the other end of the island without a thought in mind. Shuichi dropped the (thankfully empty) teacup back down.

“O-Ouma-kun…?” After their second game of chess together with the special rule, Shuichi had admitted that his favorite things about Kokichi were his eyes and when he couldn’t control his face. So he decided to hold Shuichi’s gaze as long as he could, until he felt his vision begin to teeter – which a sign that he needed to leave, because Shuichi was allowed to look at an unpainted canvas, not the broken easel that held it up.

Kokichi hopped off the counter. For some reason Shuichi didn’t back away. They were inches apart from one another. “Goodnight, Saihara-chan.” It wasn’t the best conversation in the world, but it was _something_ for Kokichi. He stepped aside to leave the kitchen.

Shuichi grabbed his sleeve.

“I-I don’t want to leave you alone.” Kokichi bit his lip. It didn’t matter whether or not he wanted to be left alone or if he felt lonely, isolation was a key part in phase two. But, dammit, Shuichi wasn’t letting go of him. He yanked at the sleeve Shuichi was holding to pull him down and wrapped his arms around him. It was the tightest embrace he could muster. He even locked Shuichi’s arms to his sides. Shuichi lost his footing and fell back against the island, but Kokichi still didn’t let go. “Ah, Ouma-kun,” he called out. Shuichi twisted around in the other’s arms until his own arms came loose. Kokichi reckoned that Shuichi was going to push him away or say something lame like _“sorry, Ouma-kun, I sorta hate your guts right now and you touching me kinda makes me wanna puke”_ but in more eloquent wording.

Shuichi hugged him back.

What was the point of getting surprised anymore? That’s precisely why Kokichi hated Shuichi. He hated the way that he smelled, he hated the quick breath he took in shock when he had first hugged him, he hated that he was actually returning his hug despite everything because that was the kind of fucking guy Saihara Shuichi was. He hated it. He hated everything. He hated the time that they spent together in the Academy, he hated that it actually wasn’t all too shitty, he hated that this guy was his first kiss, first requited love, first time, slept with him every night, seen him lose control of his face, seen him _cry_. And he was about to abandon the bubble that they had formed together just so he can end this fucking killing game and he hated it, he hated it so much – and that wasn’t a lie, he hated the Academy and its killing game.

 _Fuck_.

He was so unrelenting about his fake crying face because he could control it and use it to his advantage. He couldn’t do those things with his real crying face. He had mastered his forgery to the point where his tear ducts were his personal faucet. One second he could be crying, crying, crying with his nose running and slob coming out of his mouth and everything and the next second he could make it all go away. He couldn’t do that with real tears. He could clean up his face afterward but he couldn’t make them go away at a moment’s notice.

Shuichi was grabbing his chin and tilting his head to make him look up. _Fuck, fuck, fuck_. The hand that Shuichi had on his side tightened. “I want nothing more than to get out of this Academy.” His spoke his words so lowly and so unsurely yet they managed to hold a little more weight in the air than the ones before. “And… And to just put all of this behind us.”

“Yeah.” Kokichi wiped his eyes on the front of Shuichi’s jacket because it was his fault that he was crying after all. “When we get out of here, everything will be better.” It wasn’t, God, _it wasn’t_. Gonta had put it perfectly: it was Hell inside and Hell outside. But a gentle lie was better than a brutal truth, and it was the last thing that Kokichi could give Shuichi.

Shuichi was starting stroke his fingers up and down his back. It was time to let go. He had the urge to say something corny like “I’ll miss you” or “I’m doing this for all of us” or “please don’t think differently of me” but that was out of character for Ouma Kokichi, especially Ouma Kokichi the Mastermind. Sometimes the painful road had to be taken to work things out and Kokichi was the perfect scapegoat: everyone hated him, and he needed Shuichi to get on board too. He was about to deliver the ne plus ultra of lies that could even possibly pave the way to the ultimate truth, and in order to do that he had to detach both physically and emotionally from Saihara Shuichi.

“Hey, Saihara-chan?” Kokichi rested his chin against the center of Shuichi’s chest. “How about one last kiss?”

“‘One last’?” Shuichi waited for an explanation, but he obviously wasn’t going to get one. Kokichi just blinked at him. “U-Um, fine, I guess…? You can just do it.” Kissing didn’t feel like the most appropriate thing and hugging was already pushing it, but if Kokichi did it then maybe the guilt weighing down on his chest would lessen some.

“No, Saihara-chan has to do it. It isn’t a kiss unless he initiates it.” What was Kokichi getting at? Shuichi still did it though. He didn’t close his eyes and it was the most halfhearted kiss that he had ever given the other; a quick peck that landed more toward the corner of his mouth than the center. Because his first kiss missed the mark, he used it as an excuse to close his eyes and give another kiss that was more accurate and a little longer lasting. Kokichi’s heart lurched. He had passed the decision to Shuichi and it would’ve been easier for Shuichi to just not do it yet he did it anyway and gave _two_ kisses too.

Maybe if his lie led everyone to the truth, things would go back to the way they were.

Maybe.

Kokichi was getting too out of character.

“Hey, Saihara-chan. I have an announcement to make.” Kokichi shook Shuichi’s hands off of him and crammed a distance of at least four or so feet in between them. The physical detachment was done. Time for the emotional detachment: “Yeah, I don’t know what you think is going on, and I guess that it’s fun and all for you or whatever, but it’s not for me, so I’m ending it—right now.”

> viii. crush: _slang for a quick win, especially an overwhelming attack versus poor defensive play. a crushing move is a decisive one._

Two times is coincidence. Twice is no incidence.

Now back to the regularly scheduled programming.

Shuichi immediately straightened up. “W-What do you mean?” What was with the sudden mood swing? Kokichi shrugged.

“I’m saying that I’m bored. When I had first came to this Academy I was so excited because there were so many new people to toy with, so I made a bet with myself to see if I could come up with the best lie of all time by pretending to be in love with Saihara-chan but I’m starting to get bored of it.” He held out his hand and began to count off his fingers, “I’m getting bored of the repetitive kisses and the attention and the sappy talking. This sounds lame, especially for someone like me, but I’m starting to not feel like myself anymore. Sooo… I’m over it. There’s no point to it anyway because it distracts from the real fun stuff that’s going right now: the killing game. The real goal at hand is to either end or continue it. Whichever comes first, I’m not picky.” He sighed. “Whew, I’ve been waiting forever to get that off my chest. Ooh, and by the way I’ve already prepared some ground rules beforehand so that things won’t get awkward, because, _you know_ , breakups are always awkward, especially if it’s one-sided or whatever.

“Number one,” Kokichi waved one finger in Shuichi’s face, “no more talking to me. And you can’t use loopholes like sending me a note or a messenger or anything. Number two, no more eye contact with me. Three, no more kissing. Four, no more sex.” _Why are you saying that like you’ve had it more than one and a half times?_  Kokichi was going to beat the little voice in his mind to submission once he was by himself again. “Five, no more _anything_. No more Ouma Kokichi and Saihara Shuichi. It’s over. Well actually, can it really be over if it never started in the first place? Welp,” Kokichi moved his hands to the back of his head, “now that that’s over with, I can finally start with the Graduation Participation Celebration!” 

“Graduation Participation Celebration,” Shuichi parroted. If Kokichi thought that his voice was hollowed out before, then it held nothing but complete devastation now. He wasn’t even asking a question and it sounded like he had repeated what Kokichi said without even thinking about it.

“Yup, that’s what I said! The Graduation Participation Celebration.” The Graduation Participation Celebration was a guise for the Extermination Cancellation Arbitration. Shuichi would probably figure it out. Or maybe not. It didn’t matter. Their thoughts were officially disconnected from one another and Kokichi had to craft a mask that even Shuichi couldn’t see past. “Don’t get in the way unless you want to get caught in the crossfire. Got that, Saihara-chan?” He waved his fingers, said “Sweet dreams,” and pranced out of the kitchen.

Shuichi’s mind told him that he had to chase after Kokichi before he got too far away but his legs refused to work.

⁂

Everyone met up in the dining hall in the morning, sans Kokichi. It was all a part of the deadly cycle they were caught in: something bad happens, then they all meet up in the same place at the same time and try to cope and move on like it was “normal” but nothing was normal. Nothing was okay. Nothing was okay if the same thing kept happening over and over again.

Kaito was the last to show up with Maki in tow. “Hey, guys! Sorry about worrying everybody yesterday, but I’m fine now!” The image of Kaito in bed surrounded by a halo of bloodstained tissues was forever burned into Shuichi’s mind. Kaito’s skin was still pale and the usual boom in his voice wasn’t quite there either.

Maki rolled her eyes. “Getting Momota help should be more than enough motivation for getting out of this place.”

“But how?” Himiko said. “We don’t even know what the secret of the outside world is.”

“Gonta-kun refused to tell us because he thought that it was a despair so great that it would make us all want to die.” A few drops of sweat began to form on Tsumugi’s forehead. “I-If a sweetheart like him could be pushed to the breaking point to do what he did to Iruma-san, then what would happen to us?”

“The only people that know this ‘secret of the outside world,’” Maki pointed out, “are Gokuhara and Ouma.” She gave a sharp look to Shuichi. Oh, right. Shuichi had talked to Kokichi last night. To his knowledge that would make him the last person who saw or spoke to him.

“Um, last night, Ouma-kun didn’t mention anything about the secret of the outside world. I never asked either.”

“You never asked?” Maki sighed.

“I-I asked around it though. Whatever this secret is, he didn’t even trust me with it and… I’m supposed to be the only person that he trusts too.”

“It was a motive that was enough to make Gokuhara want to kill.” Maki’s shoulders tightened. “That bastard Ouma shouldn’t be left alone. I hate to admit it but that asshole is the smartest out of all of us. He could be plotting anything right now.”

“Before he disappeared last night, he mentioned something weird, a ‘Graduation Participation Celebration.’”

“…What the fuck is that?” Kaito asked. Kaito wasn’t looking at Shuichi but off to the side. Was he still upset about the verdict on Gonta? Kaito had even voted for Kokichi too. He stayed by Gonta’s side right until the bitter end.

“I-I don’t know.”

“Maybe he’s trying to restart the killing game again,” Himiko suggested.

“Yes…” Kiibo frowned. “That seems most probable.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it.” Shuichi pressed his fingers against his chin. “Because Ouma-kun doesn’t actually want the killing game to continue.” No one said anything. Everyone was giving him a strange look, especially Tsumugi.

“Hey, Saihara-kun…” She looked down for a second before she continued, “I see you as a reliable guy and I think I always will, so… if you really, really believe that about Ouma-kun then I will still see him as trustworthy by association like I told you before.” She must have noticed the crack in his voice. Why else would she draw back to the conversation that they had in her Research Lab ages ago? (Was it really ages ago, or did it just feel that way?) “So don’t worry, Saihara-kun.” Her eyebrows furrowed in determination. “We’ll find him soon.”

“T-Thank you, Shirogane-san.”

“Yeah, we can just use that love spell book I got earlier.” Himiko held one of her fingers up, a gesture she always did when she was going to say something… unconventional. “It’s from the MonoMono Machine so I don’t know how reliable it is, but there’s a boyfriend-girlfriend GPS tracking spell. If I can use it through Saihara to track down Ouma’s location we’ll find him in a jiffy.”

“Ah, Yumeno-san, thank you for the suggestion too, but I’m afraid that isn’t going to work.”

“Saihara, I thought that you believed in the power of my magic by now!” She pointed her finger up at him. “Are we seriously back at square one again? Do I need to turn you into a toad for questioning my skills?”

“N-No, I was going to say that I’m afraid that that spell isn’t going to work because there aren’t any ‘boyfriends’ for you to use it on.” 

“H-Huh, when did th—?” Monokuma popped up before Himiko could finish her sentence.

“How unfortunate that my favorite soap opera had to end with the breakup of the century!” Monokuma pretended to wipe tears away from his eye. “Maybe next season it’ll get revamped and they’ll switch bodies but they’ll forget about each other’s names and go on a journey to rediscover each oth—”

“Do you want something?” Maki shot a well-practiced glare to the robot bear. “Otherwise, leave us alone. We’re busy.”

“Busy? Would you say that you’re even too busy for some new keys?”

⁂

Kiibo was seriously bummed out that the hydraulic press didn’t stop for him. “Saihara-kun, what would you consider ‘organic matter’?”

“Well, organic matter is anything that’s living. I’m sure that there’s some technical science behind the term too. I think humans and plants are considered organic matter because they have certain compounds inside of them.”

“Oh, I see…” Kiibo didn’t seem too pleased with that answer.

“But I consider you something that’s living, Kiibo-kun. Just because you don’t fit into the definition of ‘organic matter’ doesn’t mean that you’re not alive in the same way like the rest of us.”

“Saihara-kun, thank you! That was very kind of you to say.” He smiled but Shuichi could tell that his eyes were scanning over him. “Saihara-kun, you have periorbital dark circles. Are you feeling tired? Have you been getting enough sleep at night?”

“W-Well, um, I didn’t really sleep last night. That’s not important though, we should finish looking around.” There ultimately wasn’t a lot to the hangar, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t deserve a thorough look over.

Shuichi decided to think about what Kiibo had said. The safety warning on the press was odd, saying that it would stop if it detected “organic matter” instead of just “a person.” Did that mean that technically if dirt or a plant was on the press then it wouldn’t work? And by that definition of “organic” meaning “living” did it mean that it wouldn’t detect a dead body? Did it matter? No one was going to murder again. Shuichi trusted the group that they had whittled down to not to commit any more atrocities.

But while he was thinking about Kiibo, Shuichi figured that he could ask him a question. “Hey, Kiibo-kun, do you think that you would be able to diagnose Momota-kun?” Even though Maki had dismissed the notion last night, it didn’t hurt to ask.

“I’m afraid that I only contain the same level of intelligence that the average human would have. I don’t have any textbook medical knowledge installed in me. But that would be very helpful in a situation like this, wouldn’t it? I’m really sorry about that.”

“No, it’s okay, really.”

“But, I can say that Momota-kun certainly did not simply ‘cut his throat’! He insisted that that was the case when he had initially coughed up blood in front of us in the courtroom. Hemoptysis is usually a symptom of something greater. I would suggest that he has a possible serious internal injury or a chronic illness.”

“Thank you for that, Kiibo-kun.”

“Of course! We must help each other to the best of our abilities.” He beckoned Shuichi to come look at the machinery in front of him. “I believe that this is used to paint the Exisals. Maybe I could even change my appearance with this?”

“Ah, Kiibo-kun, you’re fine just the way you are.”

“Saihara-kun, you don’t need to say so many nice things to me!”

“Wow, Tenko was right,” Kiibo and Shuichi turned to the entrance of the hangar to find Himiko with her hands on her hips, “ _men_ aces really do move on quick. And with a robot too? How shameless, Saihara. Ooh, and we must have some type of ethereal attraction to one another because I managed to find you no problemo again. Anyways, Shirogane wants us all to meet up in the cafeteria.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” Kiibo asked.

“I don’t know. I think she found a Flashback Light or something. And you should hurry up,” she wagged her finger at them, “not only because it’s important but because I really have to use the bathroom right now so we gotta get this over with ASAP.”

⁂

“Our numbers are truly dwindling,” Kiibo murmured to himself. “Before it would have taken ages for everyone to gather up together in one location, but now we have all arrived here within minutes.” Shuichi fixed his mouth to reply but Kaito beat him to the punch.

“Hey, have either of you found Ouma yet?” Kaito still refused to look at him. How long were things going to be awkward between them?

“N-No, sorry.”

“Way to go,” Kaito muttered. He turned back to Tsumugi. Shuichi needed to speak to him and somehow make amends, but how? He was exhausted and couldn’t even think of how to make it up to Kaito in the first place. Their environment truly was designed to make a person reach their breaking point, and Shuichi felt he was closer and closer to approaching his by the day.

“Hey, Shirogane!” Himiko called out. “What’s so important that you had to call a meeting for? Make it snappy because I really have to use the bathroom. I held it in just for you.”

Tsumugi folded her arms together. “I’m… going to ignore that.”

“Yes,” Kiibo said, “is it a Flashback Light?”

“Oh no, it’s not that. It’s the stone that Gonta-kun had found with the graffiti on it, remember that? I went out and saw that the message is completed now. It says: ‘This world is mine, Ouma Kokichi.’”

Kaito clicked his tongue. “Probably just another one of his pranks. Nothing to worry about.” No, it was plenty of a thing to worry about, and Shuichi already had a full list of things. So Kokichi was the one writing the mysterious things all along? It had started out with “horse a” just to end with “this world is mine, Ouma Kokichi”? There were a million conclusions that could be derived from that. “We shouldn’t be focusing on that kid’s pranks. What we should be focusing on finding another Flashback Light.” 

“What if Ouma stole the Flashback Light and hid it like he did with the motive?” Himiko suggested.

Maki nodded. “That’s actually what I’ve been thinking.”

“We should really find him then,” Tsumugi said.

“Who cares about him? We’re better off ignorin’ him.”

“Of course Momota would say something like that,” Maki sighed.

“Hey, I’m just sayin’! He wants us to get all caught up on him but we’re not gonna be trapped in his tricks again. Plus, I have to think about something and I don’t need him distracting me.”

“What are you thinking about?” Shuichi asked. Kaito scowled for a split second and even turned away from him slightly.

“It’s too soon to tell everyone, but all you guys gotta know is that you can leave everything to me. I’m gonna do something that’ll get us all out of here!”

After a few more words, they all parted ways.

Shuichi spent another night looking for Kokichi. Maybe tonight would prove more fruitful. He had been really out of it last night and conducted an admittedly half-assed, listless search for Kokichi, but tonight was going to be better. It didn’t matter if he was sleep deprived and mentally hyperactive and emotionally shut down.

Shuichi scoped out the Academy as best as he could, but to no avail. If only Kokichi was hiding in an obvious place like his room or Shuichi’s room yet it made sense that he didn’t want to be bothered now. Shuichi headed back to the dormitory, hunched over in defeat. He couldn’t let the night go to waste though just because his search was unsuccessful. He had to be useful somehow. Sitting in his room and doing some deep thinking and trying to make some connections sounded like the best bet for now. Shuichi still knocked on Kokichi’s door anyway. The light wasn’t on and there was no answer just like it had been all day. He didn’t know why he was expecting something different.

“Saihara.” Shuichi looked down. Maki was standing at the bottom of the dorm’s stairs. She seemed to raise an eyebrow at the sight of Shuichi slouching against Kokichi’s door. “Momota wants us to go to my Research Lab.” Looks like Shuichi wasn’t going to get sleep for another reason.

⁂

Shuichi’s mind was weaving in and out. He was momentarily stationed back into reality by Maki’s voice. “Are you in?” Shuichi nearly asked what he was in on, then he remembered. Kaito was talking about fighting Monokuma. Maybe. The details were sketchy (if Kaito had even provided details in the first place) but Shuichi managed to grab the gist of it. Kaito. Monokuma. Fight. Escape. Those were the keywords in the discussion they just had. 

“Yes. I’m in.” Everyone else was probably in, so Shuichi didn’t have much choice in the matter. Maybe. Whatever. He stumbled out of the cafeteria once they all agreed on the time and place.

“Have you seen his eyes? And he’s even beginning to lose his balance. I estimate that he has gone an approximate forty-eight hours without sleep.” Kiibo twiddled his fingers together. “He’s getting worse…”

“No shit,” Maki said.

“What are we gonna do about it?” Himiko asked. They all looked at one another.

“Well, we can’t just _force_ him to sleep…” Tsumugi frowned. “What can we do about it?”

“If he doesn’t sleep tonight, then I’ll make him.”

“Easier said than done, Harumaki.”

⁂

Kokichi was a fan of dramatic reappearances. Seeing the look on everyone’s faces when they were expecting a battle with Monokuma but they were really facing off against him was – something. It didn’t give the tingle that surprising people usually did for him. Whatever. That wasn’t important.

“According to the school regulations,” everyone jumped back when he casually tossed the bomb up in the air and caught it in his hand, “there’s technically no limit to how many people a person can kill at once… aaand the killing game will continue until there’s only two people left, so,” he painted on the widest, wildest smile he could, “who wants to survive with me? This will technically end the game and it’ll be quick and painless—even better than what Gonta wanted with you all being executed. Whoever raises their hand first is the lucky survivor!”

The peanut gallery didn’t take well to that. Kokichi was hearing variations of “fuck you, Ouma” as expected, as according to plan. He caught Shuichi open and close his mouth without saying anything. He was standing off to the back, behind Kiibo. What was his problem? Shuichi’s problem was that no words would come out of his mouth. His thoughts stayed fluttering and fleeting and he couldn’t pin them down at all. He would think of something to say and suddenly he would forget what it was or what was even being discussed in the first place.

“Yeah, I thought you babies wouldn’t like that. Sooo, presenting the Anti-Monokuma Weapons!” Kokichi jumped off the case he had been sitting on and popped it open. “These are Iruma-chan’s mementos, so we should respect them and treat them with love and care! We got these Electrohammers and bombs!” The response was a little less “fuck you, Ouma” and a little more “what the fuck is going on, Ouma” now.

Shuichi was going through the ebbs and flows of the conversation, not by his choice as he did during class trials but because his mind was _not working the way he wanted it to_. Each blink turned out to be nearly half a minute passing in reality and he struggled to keep his head upright. Thank goodness he caught on to Kokichi’s words of saying that he was going to leave the decision of whether or not to use the weapons to them.

What Shuichi wanted to say was something to the effect of “Before you go, explain that message you left in the courtyard” but it came out as, “…‘The world is mine, Ouma Kokichi’…” Kiibo thankfully picked up on it.

“Yes, that message that you left in the courtyard, what does it mean?”

Kokichi blinked a couple of times. “Uh… Don’t know what you’re talking about. Sorry.” Everyone decided to helpfully fill him on his message and how stupid it was and someone even said that it made him look like the mastermind. Shuichi wasn’t saying anything though. He was holding his head down and looked seconds away was collapsing onto Kiibo. “Maybe _I am_ the Ringleader. Ever thought about that?” He pushed out a laugh. “Just kidding~! That was a lie, or was it—?”

“I’m getting sick of you.” Maki went right up to him and wrapped her hand around his neck again. “This time I promise that I will break your neck if you don’t talk. Tell us what you’re up to— _now_.”

It was a flashback to the night after Kirumi’s trial. No one moved. Kaito yelled. “Harumaki, stop! You can’t fall into Monokuma and Ouma’s schemes and start up the killing game again!” Shuichi caught that. It actually registered in his mind too. Kaito didn’t want her to stop not because it was wrong to kill. He didn’t want Maki to possibly start up the game again. Everyone’s current stance on Kokichi was loud and clear. _Just as you wanted,_ Kokichi thought as he wrapped his hands around Maki’s wrist. Her strength was insane. She could pick him off the ground with one hand and her threat of breaking his neck was very much plausible.

His vision was growing spotty and breathing was getting near impossible. It hadn’t gotten this bad the first time. Maki really meant business. If Kokichi could find the air to speak, he would’ve made a joke about that.

Maki dropped him.

Kokichi wasn’t too far off the ground but he still managed to fall on his side. He nearly choked again on the spit that had been caught in his throat as air rushed back into his lungs. Once his eyes cleared up again, he could see it: Shuichi with his hand on Maki’s shoulder.

(Now, just saying “Shuichi was touching Maki’s shoulder” sounded downright boring if a person didn’t know the circumstances behind it. Shuichi wasn’t a touchy person and Maki was _definitely_ not a person to be touched – _especially_ being the Ultimate Assassin. Such a simple touch was a monumental event, enough for the history books even. Kokichi was lucky to witness such a phenomenon.)

Her eyes widened for a split second before she lowered them in a new deathly glower that could rival Medusa’s. “Don’t touch me unless you want to die too.”

“S-Sorry… I…” Shuichi removed his hand. He was acting like he was underwater. Kokichi, rubbing his hand over his neck, scrambled to his feet. He waited, everyone waited, for Shuichi to finish his sentence. Nothing happened. Shuichi even looked like he hadn’t said or did anything in the first place. He was standing there like a dead fish or something. Kokichi had enough.

(He broke his second ground rule of no eye contact and didn’t even realize it.)

“I’ll always think of you guys as my friends. Go down the path you believe in. I won’t get in your way.” And he left it at that.

⁂

The strenuousness of the Death Road of Despair, even with the aid of the Electrohammers, was more than just draining. It had completely debilitated Shuichi. But he couldn’t let being at the brink of exhaustion stop him. The exit was right in front of him. They finally made it. They were finally going to uncover the truth of the outside world, and he was going to uncover it whether or not every single muscle in his body was screaming and he had to pick his head up from falling over every few minutes.

They opened the door. Finally, finally, finally. And the sight was indescribable. Literally indescribable. Such a despairing image didn’t even provide any oxygen either. Everyone collapsed at once like dominoes.

(For some reason Shuichi recalled a story that Korekiyo had told him. Must have been after Kirumi’s trial. Korekiyo had said something about Kirumi’s execution reminding him of a short story called _The Spider’s Thread_ and told him about another story by the same author called _Hell Screen_ , about an artist that was commissioned to create a folding screen depicting Hell and went as far as torturing his apprentices for inspiration which led up to a plot twist of him having to watch his own daughter burn to death to understand true Hell and he finished his painting with images of magnificent horror before he took his own life.

Why had Shuichi been thinking about that again? Oh, yeah… A person’s own perception of what was Hell was different than everyone else’s. Shuichi’s hell screen was the outside world. The horrible crimson-orange and darkness that had been swirling over the sky above dilapidated buildings that lined up in a row that literally led to _nothing_. _Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing_. That was Shuichi’s hell screen.

Hell on the inside. Hell on the outside. Gonta was right. It lasted for less than a second, but Shuichi had peered into Hell itself.)

Shuichi opened his eyes to see Kokichi with a downright demonic expression on his face as he cackled. “Congratulations,” Kokichi yelled, “the killing game is officially over!!” His words went through one of Shuichi’s ears and out the other. He tried to backtrack. They had opened the door, saw the secret of the outside world, and they must’ve all passed out because… for some reason they couldn’t breathe. And now Kokichi had come out of nowhere and was laughing and laughing and laughing about something. Shuichi couldn’t even move to stand to his feet. How was he supposed to think?

He felt a hand grab the back of his jacket and pull him up. It must’ve been Maki judging from the way that he was basically manhandled to his feet. It felt like something had been dropped down on his head as he stood. Pins and needles. Like someone was stabbing thousands of pins and needles into his skull and was probing at his brain. Spots of black and white dotted across everything everywhere. He couldn’t even balance probably, but he forced himself to listen. He tried his best not to let the words go in and spill out. He only caught a few: Gofer Plan, Ultimate Hunt, last sixteen survivors of mankind, destruction of the Earth, The End, and “ _I_ was the one who stashed Monokuma on this spaceship! I’m the Ringleader of this Killing Game Semester!”

Trying to listen easily became too much. Shuichi felt his skin break out into a sweat, coating his body with a foreboding clamminess. He couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t he breathe? The door to the outside world was closed. There shouldn’t have been anything stealing his breaths anymore.

Everyone was yelling. Kokichi was yelling. Kaito was yelling back. Maki. Himiko. Tsumugi. Kiibo. Then suddenly, everyone grew silent. The black and white flecks were no longer scattered but connected and formed a blanket of darkness over Shuichi’s vision.

Sheer panic on top of already existing panic.

“S-Saihara-kun just fainted!”

“Look what you did Ouma! Saihara hasn’t been sleeping because of you and you doing all of this crazy talk made his heart collapse!”

“Get over here, you bastard!!”

Panic on top of despair on top of despair on top of despair.

⁂

It was like counting one, two, three, four, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and so forth. One wouldn’t have thought that fainting involved a lapse in time. Shuichi was at the end of the road of despair, and now he was in his room like nothing had happened. Like he had just blinked and – poof! – he teleported.

Something moved in the darkness. “It was a pain to drag you to your room. Everyone else was too depressed to help.” _Maki_. It took too long for Shuichi’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. He could make out that she was sitting on the end of his bed, and she was holding her hand against the side of her head. “I’m tired of playing nurse for everyone,” she muttered. Her voice was different. Slurred? Garbled? “Drink this.” She stood up, still holding her hand to her head, and picked up a cup of water from the nightstand. Shuichi drank it. He just opened his mouth and allowed Maki to pour it in. It helped a little.

“I just wanted to stay until you woke up again.” Maki headed to the door. She was walking too slowly. She walked slowly before but her steps were always out of purposeful leisure. The way she walking now reminded Shuichi of how he had spent the past two days stumbling around as the lack of sleep rocked him completely off course. Once Maki reached the door, she leaned her free hand against it. “I guess I should fill you in. Ouma brought out the Exisals—he can control them because he’s the mastermind—and when Momota tried to attack him, he was knocked out and kidnapped. I tried to attack him too, but all the Electrohammers ran out of energy. Ouma used an Exisal to hit me in the head and while I was dazed he took the key to the Exisal hangar from your body. It was a waste of time babysitting you, but I was the only one who could do it.” She banged her hand against the door. “But none of that matters. It doesn’t matter how hard he hits me in the head, I’m going to stop him _by any means necessary_.” She flinched and moved her hands away from her head and the door to her ears. Shuichi didn’t know how long she stayed crouched like that, quivering, covering her ears. Time didn’t exist anymore. Time didn’t matter anymore. “I-I’m going to mash Ouma into Play-Doh until he sobs for mercy for making my ears ring.” She paused for a moment as she returned one of her hands to her head. Was she expecting a response? Shuichi had absolutely nothing to say. There was nothing to talk about anymore. She left without another word.

Shuichi’s body was confined to his bed. He had all the time in the world to process everything. Maki’s voice had reached new levels of viciousness and it was an understatement to say that she was in bad shape. She was only going to worsen herself going after Kaito and Kokichi. Those thoughts were blank though. They held no weight. They were nothing. Nothing mattered anymore. It was truly the end of everything, like Kokichi had said. Not only was the killing game over, but so was the world.

The world was over.

Gonta had said it perfectly. They all should’ve died. They all should’ve been dead. There was no reason to live anymore. There was no reason to go outside. There was no reason to live anymore. There was no reason to go outside. There was no reason to live anymore. There was no reason to go outside. There was no reason to live anymore.

He was wasting his time by staying alive. He went from forty-eight hours of psychological pandemonium to forty-eight hours of nothingness. The only sounds that filled the room were the chiming of the morning and nighttime announcements, but there was no Monokuma to give them. _Because Ouma Kokichi is the Ringleader, so there’s no need for a Monokuma anymore…_ ( _…wait, that didn’t sound right…_ )

There was nothing to do but to sleep. And with sleep came dreams. Shuichi dreamed of Kaede. He had stopped dreaming about her about three or four weeks after her execution. Each dream was bittersweet. He could see her playing the piano. He could see her closing her eyes in concentration as she brought her fingers down on each key flawlessly. After she finished playing, she turned to him with one of her blinding smiles. “Hey, Saihara-kun, you’ve been keeping my promise haven’t you?” At one point, Kaede’s promise was what got Shuichi up in the morning and drove him to go through the day. Not anymore though. He forced himself to wake up.

He hadn’t eaten or drank anything in the past two days. He should get up. He knew that he should. But he couldn’t. He was stuck staring at the glass of water on the nightstand that Maki had given him. That was the last time he had drank something. It… really had been two days? Water didn’t evaporate that quickly, but Shuichi swore that there was more water in the glass than before. Did it matter though? His thoughts were growing as worthless as he was, just like how trying to live when there was nothing left was worthless.

Maybe he could just stay in is room forever and rot away into his bedsheets just like the rest of the people of the world have. It would only take another day before dehydration sets in and then he would be gone just like the rest of his friends—

There was a knock at the door. Shuichi froze. He didn’t want to answer it. He really didn’t. But for some reason he had to. His mind wasn’t telling him to. His heart wasn’t either. He had just enough strength to mechanically move the blankets from his body and walk to the door. It took a thousand-year journey to be greeted by the sight of Maki with a bandage wrapped around her head. Dried red-brown blood was splotched against the side of the bandage on the left side of her head where her hand had been the night that everything went to shit.

“…You’re making a horrible face.” He had nearly forgotten how blunt she was. “Shower before you come to the cafeteria.”


	4. Endgame, II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ↻ love all, trust few, do wrong to none.
>
>> 1\. opening: _sport, science, art._   
>  2\. middlegame: _blood, sweat, tears._   
>  3\. endgame, i: _once, twice, —._   
>  4\. endgame, ii: _—, twice, thrice._   
>  5\. win: _come back, even as a shadow, even as a dream._

> viii. crush, continued: _deform, pulverize, or force inwards by compressing forcefully; to violently subdue; bring about a feeling of overwhelming disappointment or embarrassment; have a brief but intense infatuation for someone._

Two times is coincidence. Twice is no ind—wait, was that already said before? Repetition is futile. But repetition was coiled tightly into the cycle that made up the daily and the deadly days of the Killing School Semester, all spun over from the Killing School Trip, all derived from the Killing School Life.

“O-Ouma-kun was part of the Ultimate Despair?”

“Well… He _is_ the ‘Ultimate Supreme Leader...’”

“Enoshima Junko was his idol. No wonder he pulled this shit.”

“He said he stashed Monokuma on this ship…”

_Because Ouma Kokichi is the Ringleader, so there’s no need for a Monokuma anymore…_

“…so that he could copy Enoshima’s killing games and force us all to play.”

_…wait, that didn’t sound right…_

If Shuichi had thought that during a depressed, delirious, dehydrated state, then what did the words mean when he was in a (relatively) normal one? Some people believed that an insane man’s words were wiser than a sane man’s. Maybe it was true for this case. Something didn’t feel _right_ , but Shuichi had to think rationally. He continued to listen to his friends.

“It’s way, _way_ too similar to be a coincidence,” Himiko said with a pointed finger. “Only a person that worships the Ultimate Despair would orchestrate the last survivors of humanity to kill each other.”

“Yes,” Kiibo agreed, “this killing game is just like the others in the past, pitting people against one another to test hope and despair.”

“If the killing game is so important, then why did Ouma abandon it?” Shuichi subconsciously nodded towards Maki. She had voiced out one of his swirling thoughts word for word.

“I don’t know…” Tsumugi frowned. “It’s something Enoshima Junko and the rest of the Ultimate Despair would do. They would be the type of people to get plain bored halfway through their plans and abandon them. That’s a way to cause despair, don’t you think?” Kiibo and Himiko murmured in agreement.

Shuichi caught Maki’s head slowly sink downwards. She did have a habit of preferring to look down rather than at whoever was speaking – a habit he used to have himself – but she wasn’t picking her head up. She blinked once, twice, then again. Shuichi watched her blink in sessions of twos and threes for a good few seconds. Her eyebrows furrowed and she bit her lip. Shuichi had never seen such a troubled expression on her face before.

“H-Harukawa-san?” Shuichi made sure his voice was low as to not disturb the conversation. Maki probably wouldn’t like it if he brought too much attention to her. After the Flashback Light viewing, and after Maki snapped everyone out of their stupors, they swarmed around Maki’s injury, asking her if her wound was okay, if her head was okay, if she thought it was anything serious and she brusquely brushed them off. Maki’s face was still caught up in obvious pain as she glanced up at Shuichi. Shuichi figured that it must have been pretty bad if Maki allowed an emotion either than annoyance or wearisomeness to show on her face. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I…” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “It’s hard to concentrate.” Her words were etched with a sigh, like she didn’t want to admit it. She probably didn’t. Shuichi was glad he was around. He and Kaito were probably the only people that she would tell – even if it was begrudgingly – if something was wrong with her. “Don’t worry about me.” She opened her eyes. “I bet Momota feels worse right now.”

“Do you… think you could be concussed?”

“It’s a possibility.” Of course she would shrug at that. “So I tried to keep myself awake last night by keeping watch on the Exisal hangar. But because I had to watch you, when I got to the hangar, I saw Ouma already going back inside of it.” She said it like was his fault. Oh… Maybe it was, kind of. If Shuichi hadn’t fainted then maybe he could’ve been more help. He could’ve stopped Kaito and Maki from making such reckless decisions going after Kokichi and the Exisals. Maybe then Kaito would still be here with them and Maki wouldn’t be nursing a head wound.

“—can’t lose hope!” Shuichi’s head snapped back to Kiibo and Maki slid her eyes over in the robot’s direction. “On behalf of all of our friends who have died it’s our duty as the remnants of humanity to not fall into despair. If we do, then all the efforts of everyone from the past who fought for hope would be meaningless!” Was it part of the cycle that they would trade places giving motivational speeches and re-inspiring everyone so that they could fall into the inevitable despair of the game again?

“Hm,” Maki hummed, “the robot’s not wrong.”

“Thank you for agreeing with me, Harukawa-san.” Kiibo smiled. “My inner voice has been telling me that we cannot lose hope and that we must move forward. I also believe that Ouma-kun had given us this Flashback Light in order for us to lose hope, but his plan has backfired. This is exactly the hope that we needed to continue on!” _That’s it_.

Shuichi recollected all of the information that he stockpiled over the past week alone. It all had one common theme: it was beyond conflicting. He wanted to disagree with Kokichi being the Ringleader – with every fiber of his being, he wanted to disagree with Kokichi being the Ringleader – and it wasn’t just only for his own lingering selfish desires, he had logic to back it up too. There were too many contradictions and he was only collecting more and more. If Kokichi was the mastermind, why did he abandon the game? Why did he leave them with a memory that would invigorate them instead of only break them further? Why would he leave such a motivating memory during their lowest point? Was he planning to build them back up just to break them again? Shuichi couldn’t believe that. He had to keep his thoughts to himself though. There would be a time and place to express them, and he knew that now wasn’t it. He needed more, more of everything, _anything_.

“What do you guys want to do now?” Shuichi mainly asked the question so that he could gauge everyone’s reactions. They all answered with that they wanted to take down Kokichi the Remnant of Despair and rescue Kaito – _obviously_. Could… Kokichi be doing this on purpose? Is _this_ what he wanted? But the most important question was, despite everything, did Shuichi still trust him?

Everyone agreed to the plan on raiding the hangar tomorrow once their Electrohammers recharged.

“I’m going to kill Ouma.” Maki’s words were still muddled together but their meaning was crystal clear. “If I kill him it would be the end of everything. It’s the point of my talent anyway.”

“You can’t kill him.”

“Saihara,” she willed her eyes to open as she turned to face him, “you don’t need to defend Ouma just because you had a relationship with him behind our backs. That tie that you two shared has been meaningless ever since he wanted to kill Gokuhara and reveal himself as the mastermind and betray us all.”

“Ah, but, um, Harukawa-san…?” Tsumugi paled when Maki flung her glare her way, but she continued, “I-I don’t think it’s a good idea to kill him actually.”

“Why not?”

“I’m going to have to agree with Saihara-kun and Shirogane-san,” Kiibo said. “If you kill him then you’re just giving in to the Remnants of Despair’s plans by restarting the killing game.” Maybe Shuichi could use that line of reasoning to convince Maki.

“Y-Yes, if you kill Ouma-kun—a Remnant of Despair—then that’s just want he wants.” Shuichi felt the familiar cool gleam of sweat that always trailed down his back whenever he lied. He usually reserved dishonesty for the courtroom. (Ironic, right?)

If he was going along with what he wanted to think, that Kokichi was not the mastermind, it was more than just crazy. It was worse than insanity. He would have to go against everything the Flashback Lights provided and he had no solid concrete evidence to even question them in the first place. He couldn’t just pick and choose the memories that he wanted to “believe” in. That was absolutely ludicrous. Why now would he even dare do such a thing as to challenge the authenticity of the Flashback Lights?

 _Because you’re being selfish_.

Maybe. To adopt black-and-white thinking: Ouma Kokichi was either the Ringleader or he was not the Ringleader. And especially with the growing countering facts that were being presented left and right, Shuichi figured that he needed to plan for everything, as usual. If he used Kokichi’s philosophy of warm logic, then Ouma Kokichi was obviously not the Ringleader. But if he used Kaito’s opposing philosophy of blind faith, then Ouma Kokichi was obviously the Ringleader.

Saihara Shuichi had a long ways to go.

⁂

Shuichi couldn’t sit around in his room and twiddle his thumbs until morning.

It was strange to suddenly feel so anxious and antsy after he had spent the past few days practically hibernating. One thing that had been itching at his mind was to see if there was a possibility that he could check on Kaito. Maybe there was even a chance that he could speak to Kokichi too. Maki said that he was hiding out in the hangar. It shouldn’t be too difficult. He could just go over there, do whatever he could do, and then leave. The most probable outcome was that he wasn’t going to be able to speak to Kaito and especially not to Kokichi, but it was worth a shot. It was better to do something rather than nothing.

Shuichi nearly bumped into Tsumugi when he stepped out into the courtyard. “Oh, Saihara-kun.” Her smile wasn’t exactly anxious but outlined with something else, something that Shuichi would label as “sheepish” but it wasn’t quite that either. Remorseful? No, that was too strong of a word. “You must be too nervous to stay in your room too, huh?”

“Y-Yeah. I couldn’t go to sleep and I couldn’t just sit around anymore.”

“You know, it’s ironic how Harukawa-san was acting all _tsun-tsun_ the entire time but now she’s the one leading us all to a new hope. It’s obviously Momota-kun’s influence now that I think about it.”

“Hm, Momota-kun’s influence? What do you mean?”

“Well, she stayed out all night in front of the hangar _with_ a head injury for him. It’s plain obvious that she has some sort of interest in him.”

“Oh… Maybe so. I, um, actually never thought about it that way.”

“Oh, yeah? Maybe it’s because you’re on the losing side of their love triangle.”

“H-Huh?”

“It’s was a joke, Saihara-kun. You don’t have to act so surprised!” He knew that she was joking. It didn’t show on her face though. (Since when had Shuichi become the expert on the way that people facially express their emotions?) Even with the promise of new hope from Maki, Kiibo, and Kaito, it wasn’t enough to uplift the weariness that left its permanent mark on everyone. “I mean, I’m only joking,” she repeated, “but, now that I think about it, Harukawa-san’s interest in Momota-kun must have developed over time while you and Ouma-kun made a connection from the start, huh?”

“I, um… I guess that’s sort of true. I talked to him a lot during the first few weeks we were here.” It felt weird to voice out loud. It felt like he was putting soap in his mouth and trying to speak through the bitter suds. He tried to shrug the discomfort off. What he and Kokichi had had been so secret and so safe for so long that the present time didn’t feel real. Some people said that a relationship is like a fantasy and afterwards reality comes flooding in. It was vice versa for Shuichi. The days he spent with Kokichi had been the realest, rawest times of his life that he could remember. Who knew that Ouma Kokichi would be the one that could ground him straight down from the clouds? What a paradox.

“Now that I think about this too, I think that Ouma-kun has influenced you too. He made you stronger in a way. I don’t think that the old Saihara-kun would’ve had the courage to say what you said at the end of Gonta-kun’s trial to Ouma-kun about all the things that he could’ve done, and what you said to all of us after Momota-kun had hit Ouma-kun about how we needed to keep Akamatsu-san’s promise and the last thing we needed was more violence and distrust. Vice versa too. You made him really happy— _too_ happy. Around the time that you two must have gotten together Ouma-kun was pulling _a lot_ of pranks on everyone—especially me.” She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “For weeks I couldn’t pass a corner without him popping up in that horrible horse mask. I think he loved bothering me so much because I would never fail to get scared.”

“Ah, Shirogane-san, I’m so sorry about that. I actually didn’t know that he was doing that.”

“It’s fine! You know, I’m skilled in the art of manga and there’s a bunch of _shoujo_ manga that show how couples always affect each other whether it’s subconscious or not…” She suddenly froze in her thinking pose. It brought Shuichi back to the first time he had met her. When Kaede had poked at her face and Tsumugi even admitted that she was ignoring them. He slowly waved his hand in front of her eyes as he let the memory fade away. “Even though we can’t go back to those happy times—” Shuichi quickly snapped his hand back to his side “—both at the beginning of the killing game when everything seemed okay and during our days as students, I want to stay confident until the very end because it’s part of my stubbornness as a member of Hope’s Peak Academy.”

“Yes, Shirogane-san, I agree with you.” She clenched her fist and nodded. “Oh, and, um, thank you for what you said earlier, about Ouma-kun and I influencing each other. I don’t know how to describe it but those words made me feel better in a way—that things weren’t always so bad, you know?” God, he was bad at talking casually, but she seemed to understand what he meant.

“Of course, Saihara-kun! I mean, it’s plain obvious that you both have rubbed off on each other. Who knows, maybe you two were designed that way.” Shuichi blinked a couple of times. His eyes must’ve been tricking him. He thought he saw Tsumugi’s eyes cloud over with something vacant for a split second. It must have been some loitering exhaustion on his part and the fact Tsumugi was feeling the same way too. From his understanding everyone except Maki had decided to stay locked in their rooms for past two days just like he had after learning the truth of the outside world. His face probably went blank sometimes too. He couldn’t blame Tsumugi for that.

She shrugged and put her hand on her hip as she turned around. Shuichi took it as his cue to finally head to the hangar.

⁂

Exisals were marching around Monokuma. Maki had mentioned that Kokichi could control them since he was mastermind. _(Is Ouma Kokichi the mastermind? Is Ouma Kokichi not the mastermind?)_ There were Exisals watching over Monokuma – how unnecessary and strange if he was the mastermind. There were Exials protecting Monokuma – how necessary if he was the mastermind. Everything had a double meaning. Everything had a deeper meaning. It was a detective’s creed to shuffle through every single possible meaning to find the one that held nothing but the utmost, absolute truth. And Shuichi was determined to find it no matter how difficult or impossible it may be.

Shuichi sighed to himself as he crept past the Exisals. He really had passed out at the worst possible moment. He missed out on a lot of vital information. Seeing the outside world and a claim to the title of Ringleader was literally the most pivotal point in the entire Killing School Semester and he had missed it because he decided to exhaust himself for two days beforehand. There was a possibility that Maki could have lapses in memory due to her own injury too, so Shuichi wasn’t even sure if she was a completely reliable source or not. Yet she had taken the time to watch after him – something she clearly did not want to do, she had to have mentioned how much “time she wasted babysitting” at least three times by now – and even provided him a synopsis on what happened while he was out even when he didn’t ask for one. Then again, asking Kiibo, Tsumugi, or Himiko to see if they could fill in any possible gaps in the story didn’t seem too great either. Even though they were able to catch Kokichi’s entire spiel, the despair surrounding the event could’ve made their recollections hazy. Shuichi was well acquainted with repressed memories.

Geez, now that he thought about it, he wasn’t even sure if Maki was knocked out after her failed attack. If Kaito had been, then surely she had been too most likely. And she still took him to his room and watched after him? Shuichi owed Maki big tim—

“Who the fuck’s out ther—? Shuichi?!” Kaito’s voice was still loud even when he tried to whisper. Shuichi hurried up to the window Kaito was peeking out of. “What, what’re you doing here?” At least Kaito was looking him in the eye again.

“I-I’m here to—”

“Hey, hey, don’t talk so loud. Ouma’s keepin’ watch.” Kokichi was on the other side of Kaito? If only there was some way to talk to him. But even if Shuichi could, it was probably best that Kokichi was left completely unaware of their little jailbreaking plan. Speaking of which, Shuichi filled Kaito in on it. It was only appropriate as Kaito was the one being broken out of jail in the first place.

“Harukawa-san was actually the one that got us all together. She helped us after we had all given up.”

“Are… you doing alright, Shuichi?”

“O-Oh, I’m fine. Harukawa-san really helped me out.”

“No, talkin’ ‘bout when you fainted. You scared the shit outta everyone.”

“Ah, sorry. Harukawa-san helped me with that too. I got a lot of rest and everything. What about you? Harukawa-san told me you were knocked out before Ouma-kun took you.” It was on the tip of Shuichi’s tongue to ask about Kaito’s health, but it was a miracle that they were even speaking and looking at each other in the first place. He didn’t dare want to disrupt the harmony he managed to reformulate between the two of them.

“Eh, don’t worry about that. I’m a grown fucking man! I can take a little bump in the head. Pssh, it’s nothing.” Kaito flashed him a wide grin. It didn’t take a genius to know that it was strained.

“M-Momota-kun,” now was a better time than any, “I’m sorry about Gont—”

“Ey, don’t worry about that either—”

“No, please, Momota-kun, I need to say this.” Kaito’s smile drooped. “I’m sorry about what happened with Gonta-kun and with what happened with Ouma-kun too.”

“Hey, Shuichi, it’s not your responsibility to take the blame for what that freak did. I thought I taught ya a lesson after what happened with Akamatsu?”

“N-No, I’m not apologizing for that exactly. It’s just—I trust you and I want us to figure out the truth together.” Shuichi could at least smile at that. It wasn’t so hard to make it up to Kaito after all. “So, once we get you out of here, I’m going to look forward to working together to find a new reason to live.”

“Hey, you’ve done a good job as my sidekick. Look at you, giving fucking inspirational speeches and shit.”

“Ah, Momota-kun that wasn’t long enough to be a speech…”

“Whatever. Close enough for you. And we’re gonna reach even farther than the truth, especially you. I bet you’re gonna reach beyond the truth.” Kaito winked. Suddenly his smile dropped again and he glanced toward the door. “It’s around the time Ouma checks on me, so I think you better book it.” Shuichi nodded. He wanted to depart on a hopeful note by saying something reassuring but he felt himself get tongue-tied. He could only nod and scuttle out of the hangar as fast as he could.

⁂

 _An absurd thought came to mind: what if he had to choose between Kokichi and Kaito someday? But that was, of course, senseless and he dismissed the thought immediately_.

Back then Shuichi thought of it as something typical, like Kokichi and Kaito would get in another fight and then they would try to make him “pick” between the two of them, which he would of course not do and then he would try his best to resolve everything between them to the best of his abilities. He wasn’t expecting the worst case scenario. Never in his wildest dreams was he expecting to have to choose which one of them were dead.

 _Crash_.

Shuichi barely registered the sound. His Monopad was on the ground. He dropped it. “Hey, hey, hey! Don’t go dropping those babies around like they’re a dime a dozen!” He was being scolded by Monokuma. He needed to get it together. He needed to read the Monokuma File.

Nothing.

Kiibo had stepped out to try and ease the dizziness he was getting from the aftershocks of the Electrobomb. Everyone else was either too shocked to investigate (Tsumugi and Himiko) or refused to (Maki). All three agreed on one thing: Kaito was dead and the mastermind, Kokichi, killed him. There was no point in investigating. This was going to be the easiest class trial of all time.

It was all on Shuichi.

He forced himself to dissociate. The only way that he could investigate with such petrifying circumstances is if he extracted himself from reality completely and intertwined himself within its inner layers. If he just weaved himself in and out, dispelling the crumbling reality that brought too many emotions too fast and inviting his mind’s pocket of reasoning that perfectly stored information given his ultimate talent level of compartmentalization, he should be fine.

 _Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. This was going to be fine. Just think but don’t think at the same time_.

Blind faith said that if Ouma Kokichi was dead then he was not the Ringleader because the killing game was still continuing. Warm logic said that if Momota Kaito was dead then Ouma Kokichi was indeed the Ringleader and the most probable candidate for being the culprit. Warm faith whispered that neither of them were dead or the culprit. Blind logic was standing around and theorizing instead of sorting through evidence. Shuichi got to work.

⁂

Minimal. From the fact that the Monokuma File didn’t even present a victim to the bleak amount of evidence gathered during the investigation. Shuichi was working and preparing for what could arguably be the most important class trial by his lonesome. He needed more eyes to be sure that he left no stone unturned but Tsumugi was as white as a sheet and her arms were wrapped around herself, Himiko was sitting by the entrance of the hangar with her head in her lap, Maki was standing outside, and Kiibo was still trying to gather his bearings.

Kaito’s sleeve was coming out of the press. It was unmistakably _his_ sleeve, but _why_? It didn’t make sense, wasn’t the press supposed to stop when it detected “organic matter” on its sensor? Could a person be killed, thus no longer in an “organic” state, and then have their body be disposed of in the press to hide the true cause of death and identity? It was a possibility that couldn’t be ruled out. Absolutely no possibilities could be—

“Saihara-kun…” Shuichi snapped away from the press and turned to Tsumugi. She was still looking downwards, still was holding herself. “You think it’s Ouma-kun that’s dead… don’t you?”

“W-Why…?” _Why would you even say that?_ Shuichi wished that he was bold enough to say such things.

“That’s what you think. It’s plain to see from your face. But… I don’t think that Momota-kun would be able to be killed by Ouma-kun. Not that I’m making fun of either of them or anything, though.”

“Right… Neither of them are people that can die easily.” Back to investigating.

⁂

Shuichi ran over all the evidence that he had collected. There was the Monokuma File that presented virtually no evidence yet that was evidence within itself. Shuichi quickly learned that the holes in the files were actually more helpful than harmful. He was already given the gapes that he needed to fill out for the trial. There was the press machine – a weapon that could deliberately hide the victim and their cause of death. There was the safety warning on the press with rules that could have been easily manipulated – as it was a key feature of the killing game to manipulate any and all rules, it seemed. The electric lock. Blood trail. Black case. Three arrows: one that was broken and bloodied, one that was intact and bloodied, and one that was not bloodied and dripping some type of clear substance. Crossbow. A poison bottle from his Research Lab. A bloodstain. The bathroom window. The hangar shutter. The Electrobomb. The Electrohammer. The Exisals. Kiibo’s account on Himiko.

Kaito’s sleeve hanging from the press with a hole pierced through it. Kokichi’s jacket with a single similar puncture on the shoulder sleeve encompassed by _too much, too much_ blood.

It was time. _It’s fine, it’s fine_ , he repeated to himself as he stepped onto the elevator. _It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s going to be fine_.

⁂

Maki’s fingers danced across the bloodied part of her bandage as she closed her eyes and frowned. “When I had used an Exisal to break into the hangar, Momota had already shot Ouma with a crossbow. I tried to take that moment of surprise to my advantage to shoot Ouma with one of my poisoned arrows, but he shined the flash from the video camera in my eyes.” Her hand dropped from her head and gripped at her podium. “Usually such a stupid thing like ‘too much light’ or ‘too much darkness’ wouldn’t throw my aim off,” her eyebrows furrowed, “but because of my _condition_ my eyes are sensitive to the light. My aim was thrown off and I missed my shot. That didn’t matter though. I jumped down from the Exisal and we fought. Because of my _condition_ , he managed to knock the crossbow out of my hands. I still got the upper hand though and I knocked him to the ground. I grabbed one of my poisoned arrows and I was going to stab him with it, but that’s when Momota decided to be stupid and… he stepped in front of him, and I stabbed him instead…”

“Harukawa-san…” The words left Shuichi’s mouth unconsciously.

She opened her eyes again. “That’s when I ran back to your Research Lab to get the antidote. I couldn’t go back into the hangar, so I threw the antidote through the bathroom window. That bastard Ouma stole it from Momota and he even drank it to rub it in our faces that Momota was never going to get it. Then he said that he could ‘rest easy’ because another class trial was going to start with… with Momota as the victim and me as the Blackened who killed him.” She slowly released her grip on the podium. Her knuckles were white. “And… that’s what happened. My poisoned arrow that was meant for Ouma hit Momota instead, and I killed him.”

“Yup, that’s exactly what happened!” The Exisal had switched to Kaito’s voice. Shuichi didn’t want to look at it. It was sickening. _Someone_ was in there, toying with them, going back and forth using Kaito and Kokichi’s voices – it was nauseating. “I was just coverin’ up what Ouma did because I didn’t wanna make Harukawa the killer! Hope you guys can understand that!” Maki tossed a careless glare the Exisal’s way.

“That’s why if I was the Blackened of this trial, I was planning on sacrificing everyone in order to eliminate Ouma.”

“Yeah, guys—” it switched back to Kokichi’s voice “—I didn’t want all of my friends to think badly of Harumaki-chan, so that’s why I came up with my plan in the first place!”

“Stop making a fool out of me!” Maki slammed her hands down on her podium. “We’re _not_ your friends. We are all just tools that you wanted to see suffer for the sole purpose of entertaining your sick fantasies.”

“Ma~ybe so! So, so, soooo... now what? Is everyone going to vote for Harumaki-chan as the culprit and continue living together peacefully forever and ever in this Academy or are we going to do as she wishes and let everyone die just so she can kill m—?”

“No,” Shuichi cut in, “it’s not time to vote yet.”

“Hey, hey, hey now! That was _my_ line!!” Monokuma whined. His cry went ignored.

“Thank you, Harukawa-san, for telling us what happened. I know what to do now.” She tore her eyes away from the Exisal so she could nod towards him. There was a hidden truth in her statement: why didn’t the alarm go off when she had gotten close to the shutter while trying to break the control panel? It only took a few minutes of discussion to deduce that an Electrobomb could have been used to disable not only the alarm, but the hydraulic press’ safety mechanism.

Kaito could have been alive when he was underneath the press. A whole new world of possibilities was opened up. The one that was hanging the lowest over Shuichi’s head was the probability that Kokichi _could_ have killed Kaito with the press. Shuichi voiced his thought.

“Mhm, mhm,” the Exisal said. “It _is_ a possibility. But too bad it’s impossible to know if Momota-chan died from the press or the poisoned arrow, huh?”

“Why is no one listening to me?! It’s obvious Momota died from the press!” Himiko’s face was turning red. “Because Ouma! Is! The! Ringleader! How many times do I have to say this?”

“But, Yumeno-san, there’s no way of knowing exactly how he died. The press made sure of that.” Shuichi turned his body to the Exisal but kept his face downwards. “Is that what you wanted, to create a truth that no one can reach?” But that didn’t make sense whether Kokichi was the mastermind or not.

“…Aaanyways, it’s voting time! Geez, I feel like a broken record. So are we voting for me or Haru—?”

“I’m the real broken record here! That’s _my line_! Only _I_ can say when it’s voting time! And it’s not voting time yet.”

“Monokuma-chan, everyone already knows the truth.” The Exisal’s arms came up in a gesture that mimicked a shrug. “So shouldn’t it be fine to vote? You already know who the culprit is, right?”

Monokuma began to sweat.

“Y-Y-Yeah! O-Of course I know who the c-c-culprit is!”

“Monokuma.” Shuichi raised an eyebrow. “Do you… not know who the culprit is?”

“O-O-Of _course_ I know who the culprit is!” Monokuma’s laugh even lost its usual oomph.

Shuichi could see the true aim now: the culprit wanted to create a crime that even Monokuma could not solve. A hopeful thought came to mind. _Why would Kokichi be involved in a crime that even Monokuma couldn’t solve, does that mean that he’s not the Ringleader?_ Himiko even said as much out loud.

Shuichi steadily brought his hand to his lips. “Maybe,” he let the word roll off his tongue – it still felt sudsy, still made his mouth feel like it was filled with cotton, “Ouma-kun is not the mastermind.” That certainly opened up the floodgates. Shuichi was forced to raise his voice in order to be heard over everyone. It was time to let his friends in on some of his thoughts. “We only think that Ouma-kun is the Ringleader because he said so. Monokuma has never said anything about it to my knowledge, right?” Maki had never mentioned Monokuma showing up during Kokichi’s proclamation while Shuichi was passed out. Added on with how Monokuma was absent during the morning and nighttime announcements and he had been surrounded by Exisals when Shuichi had snuck into the hangar to see Kaito…

“Geeeez, Saihara-chan. You’re really, really smart but really, really stupid at the same time, you know? I’ll explain it to you slowly so that you understand, okay?” The Exisal brought its arms back in a way that imitated Kokichi’s arms-behind-the-head pose. “I am the Ringleader. The Ringleader controls Monokuma. What, do you want Monokuma-chan to give another big announcement? Was mine not good enough for Saihara-chan?! I-I could just cry right now!” He let out an exaggerated wail.

“I hate to agree with Ouma, but I have to agree with Ouma.” Himiko held one of her fingers up. “He was a Remnant of Despair and the mastermind—”

“Just because he was a Remnant of Despair—” _is he, is he, is he?_ “—doesn’t mean that he’s automatically the Ringleader.” It was time for the infamous tactic of throwing words back in someone’s face. Shuichi looked up at Monokuma. “This is supposed to be a fair trial, right? So, tell us: is Ouma Kokichi the Ringleader or not? If you don’t answer, this trial will be inequitable because you’ll be an accomplice to Ouma-kun’s lies.”

“There’s no need to answer intrusive questions,” the Exisal snarled.

“But aren’t _you_ the intrusive one?” Monokuma raised his paw in the air. “Consider this my revenge for aggravating me. Nope! Ouma-kun is _not_ the Ringleader!” Cause: shocking statement, effect: loud uprising – it was part of the cycle. Shuichi hung aside and took the time to think through the clutter.

He thought back to the video. Why would the culprit bring incriminating evidence toward themselves? That recording the Exisal showed must have been another tool used to hide the victim from Monokuma. The video showed Kaito being crushed would make them all believe that Kaito had died and since there were no way to confirm the identity of the body… Was that Kokichi’s true aim? Maybe. Was it farfetched? Most likely. Was Shuichi grasping at straws? Absolutely. Shuichi decided to bring it up nonetheless.

Shuichi caught Kiibo’s words: “Is… Is there a possibility that the person getting crushed was changed somewhere in the video?”

“Nice try, but n~ope!” The Exisal laughed. “There’s _no way_ that the film could’ve been edited. Monokuma-chan even confirmed that it wasn’t doctored by any of the computers in the Academy _and_ the only functions on the camera are the pause, play, record, and stop buttons—ooh, and of course the flash option too. Can’t forget about that! Right, Harukawa-chan?” Maki only smirked.

“It _is_ possible to edit that video.” Maki’s smirk faded when she turned to Shuichi. “Hey, Saihara.”

“Y-Yeah?”

“From now on, I’m going to think with an unclouded mind, so… see if you can figure it out and make sure that Momota is still with us because…” She shook her head. “Because I-I can’t take the idea that I could’ve killed him.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. Maki was crying. Harukawa Maki _was crying_. If that wasn’t encouragement, then Shuichi didn’t know what was. He could imagine how she felt. He had a lot on his plate too. She was facing the chance of murdering Kaito, their friend and someone that they cared for tremendously, while Shuichi was faced with not only Kaito but Kokichi too, someone who had manipulated a murder in the past, who claimed to be the Ringleader, and now was possibly either the victim or a culprit with an motive that was going to take jumping through a million loopholes to figure out.

“Harukawa-san…” Kiibo started. “It is strange that the video froze for a moment before the press went down. What do you think about that, Saihara-kun?”

“I was thinking the same thing actually. Remember when we tested it out together? It never froze when it went down. That can only mean that the force stop button was used.”

“Yes, yes! It makes sense. Because an Electrobomb was used, thus making the press’ sensors null, the force stop button must have been used in order for the press to pause like that.” Kiibo’s triumphant smile immediately faltered. “So Ouma-kun pressed the force stop button and—W-Wait, that can’t be right, can it?”

Shuichi didn’t want to be the one to say it, but he had to: “It could only be him. Ouma-kun pressed the force stop button while simultaneously pressing the pause button on the camera and…” There was only one reason why he would do that. “The victim was switched. The victim’s body was swapped out and then the play button was pressed again along with the press.”

“T-That makes sense,” Tsumugi piped up. “I noticed that the video was shot at an odd angle. A trick like that could only work if it was shot a certain way.”

“Momota’s still alive?” Himiko and Maki said at the same time. “They must have switched the body out with someone who died. Since Ouma’s the mastermind he can—wait.” Himiko’s excitement died down in seconds. “Ouma’s… not the mastermind.”

“Right, Yumeno-san!” Monokuma picked up. “Only the Ringleader could have access to dead bodies. _Plus_ we kinda already gotten rid of all of the bodies so that’s sorta impossible.”

“I still can’t believe he’s actually working with us,” Tsumugi murmured.

(There was only one way to describe the sense of realization: it was like someone was slowly creeping down the hall and you could see their shadow approaching underneath the door. You could hear them. You could hear the intruder slowly inching closer and closer and closer and slowly, slowly, slowly opening up the door and the knob was turning and the door was creaking and you couldn’t do anything about it because you decided to hide instead of escaping or barricading the door or calling for help – instead of doing something logical.

And the intruder’s message before they plunged their blade of brutal honesty through your heart? _The body couldn’t have been switched with anyone in the hangar except for Kokichi himself._ )

“N-No,” Shuichi gasped out.

“Saihara,” Maki called out. It must have been written all over his face. “What’s wrong?” Shuichi wanted to beat himself up for missing such a crucial detail. What type of “detective” was he?

“I-In order for… In order for such a trick to work, the Blackened and the victim would have to cooperate. Since Momota-kun was the one underneath the press in the video, he was the one who was switched out and… and… Ouma-kun was the one killed by the press.” It took everything within Shuichi to turn his head up to the Exisal staring right back at him. “That means that Momota-kun is in that Exisal right now. Momota-kun is the culprit that killed Ouma-kun.”

“No.” Maki’s voice took on a ruthless tone. “Stop saying idiotic things. That’s impossible. I’m the culprit. _I’m_ the culprit who killed Momota. I saw Ouma drink the only antidote to the poison right in front of me. There was no way of saving him.” Shuichi moved his hand over his heart. He understood what Maki was doing. He understood it perfectly. He felt the exact same way she did. “I stabbed Momota with the poisoned arrow and I killed him.”

“There are so many possibilities,” Shuichi pointed out. He fueled the flame of Maki’s fury. “Things couldn’t have just gone one way. Not everything is linear. What if… What if Ouma-kun was just _pretending_ to drink the antidote? And then after you left the window, that’s how he gave Momota-kun his motive to go along with this plan: he would give Momota-kun the antidote to prevent you from becoming the Blackened in exchange if he followed along—and that’s how Momota-kun was manipulated into becoming a part of the plan of creating an unsolvable murder.”

“That’s a reach if I’ve ever heard one,” Maki muttered.

“ _Exactly_. It’s something that we would’ve never thought of: someone creating a plan where they die.”

“Wow, that’s just deluded reasoning.” The Exisal shrugged. “But whatever. You guys can do whatever you want. I don’t care if you guys get it right or wrong. I’m over it.”

“Hey,” Himiko said, finger poised, “it’s a good thing that you don’t care. Because that means that if we get the culprit wrong, then we won’t—”

“No, _I_ still care,” Monokuma said.

“Right, right, riiiight! Because the only way your useless little lives will be taken is if Monokuma-chan’s correct in his deduction. If the gamemaster believes in the wrong truth, then the players’ lives can’t be taken away—because there can’t be a killing game if the headmaster himself is wrong.”

Shuichi understood.

(There was another way to describe the sense of realization when it arrived in the style of a grand epiphany: it felt like you were walking home. Alone. At night. The streetlights stretched up, up, and up and blended in with the stars themselves. Alone. Alone. Alone. Until the headlights of a car pulls up beside you and cut through the darkness of the night and the lonesomeness of your aura. It strolls up beside you, straddles up beside you – first impressions were always inviting – and then the rose-tinted window pulled down to reveal a gun and the bullet shot you clean through the heart. Alone. Alone. Alone. _Why? Why? Why? Please. Please. Please. Anything but this_.)

The crux of the plan was to ruin the killing game.

Kaito and Kokichi wanted to ruin the killing game.

Kokichi and Kaito want to ruin the killing game.

And if Momota Kaito and Ouma Kokichi wanted to put their lives at stake to ruin the killing game, then Shuichi wasn’t going to stop them. He trusted the both of them. He was the only one who could help the both of them. Blind faith, warm logic – he was going to use both to help the people that he was the closest to in the Academy.

“H-Hey guys, before we vote…” Shuichi clutched his hand over his heart. He understood. He understood. He understood. Kaito was inside the Exisal. He just needed to reach out to him to let him know – _I understand. I understand. I understand. I’ll help you._ “I… have a confession to make.”

“Is… there something wrong, Saihara-kun?”

“S-Saihara-kun, what is it? Did you just realize something else?”

“Saihara, we couldn’t have made a mistake right? It took us five-hundred years just to get this point. It’ll be so tiring to go back to square one…”

“…Confession?”

“Yes, I, um… Sorry. I can’t do this anymore.” Shuichi tightened his fingers around his chest and turned to the Exisal. To Kaito. “Ouma-kun, I’m sorry. I can’t lie anymore. Guys,” he turned back to his friends, “I-I saw Ouma-kun. And it was after the body was crushed by the press. I had gone back to the hangar to check on Momota-kun again and I saw Ouma-kun putting his jacket in the toilet a-and—I-I-I’m sorry for not saying this before but… he threatened me. He forced me to go along with his plan. He… You guys are right. He has changed for the worse and… I-I should’ve listened to what you all were saying. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t accept the fact that Ouma-kun isn’t who I thought he was and for—just… It’s him.” Shuichi pointed a shaky finger to the Exisal. “It’s him inside the Exisal right now. Not Momota-kun.”

Monokuma was the first to react: “Hey, hey, _hey_ now! I’m not the type to give away freebies, so if you’re wrong then I’m definitely, absolutely, positively handin’ out executions for everyone!”

“That’s fine. Because I’m not wrong.” Shuichi clenched his hand into a fist. The Exisal – _Kaito_ – didn’t say anything. The robot wasn’t even moving. Its arms fell to its sides. “Everyone. You… You know who to vote for now. I’m so sorry for keeping this from you all.”

“Saihara.” Maki wasn’t growling, wasn’t mumbling; her voice wasn’t doing anything. “Why now?” Good question. The real answer was “Because I just realized it now,” but he couldn’t say that, not yet.

“Yeah!” Himiko joined in. “Why’d you wait right before we vote? This…” She began to sweat. “This doesn’t feel very good. It makes me feel like we were building up to the wrong choice the entire time and now all of a sudden—”

“No, you’re right,” Maki cut in. “We _have_ been working to the wrong choice the entire time. Saihara, don’t tell me that this is some type of last ditch ploy to help that bastard that you called a ‘boyfri—’”

“It’s not!” Complete silence blanketed over the courtroom. Shuichi wasn’t a person to yell. Everyone knew that. “Why would I do that to you guys?” It was too cruel. Lying was to his friends was too much. Shuichi couldn’t even will his hands to stop shaking.

“It _is_ confusing, Saihara-kun,” Kiibo said. “We spent this entire time deducing that it was Momota-kun who’s alive and now suddenly you’re saying that it’s Ouma-kun? This is… This is very troubling.”

“S-Saihara-kun,” Tsumugi was staring down at her podium; Monokuma had already started the voting time, “w-what—? W-Why?”

“Hey.” He mustered up a smile. He was sure that it was the smaller variety when his lips parted just enough to show his upper row of teeth but his lips quivered too much. And Kokichi always pointed it out whenever he smiled like that, and always poked his finger against his lips to stop them from quivering. But Kokichi wasn’t there. Kokichi wasn’t anywhere anymore except underneath the press. “I’ve never been wrong before about a case, have I?” Kokichi was crushed, crushed, crushed underneath the cold metal of a hydraulic press and the only thing left that Shuichi could do for him was trust him and fulfill his last wish, just like with Kaede. “P-Please. We… have to trust each other. That’s what we’ve always wanted.” He moved his hand away from his chest and did it first. He secured his vote for Kokichi first. “…That’s what Akamatsu-san always wanted.” He closed his eyes. Manipulation was Kokichi’s strong suit, not his. Ouma Kokichi was the king of court when it came to the lying game, and Saihara Shuichi was an occasional visitor that reaped the benefits whenever he was scrapping at the bottom of the barrel.

“The votes are all in!” Monokuma announced. “And my vote’s in too—it’s unanimous for Ouma Kokichi!” Shuichi’s eyes shot open. He would’ve completely understood if everyone still voted for Kaito. Maki, Kiibo, Himiko, and Tsumugi really did trust him. And he knew that they trusted Kaito too. And it was okay if Shuichi was the only one that trusted Kokichi. He believed in them. He believed in all of them.

“Hey, hey!” Monokuma hopped to stand up in his throne. “Come on and come out, culprit! We don’t got all day! Well…” Monokuma slumped back in his seat again. “Maybe we do, considering how much these people like to talk, talk, talk, talk and drag everything out. Good thing we turned this four to five hour trial into, like, an eleven to twelve paged one by filtering out all the fluff, huh?”

“Shut up,” Maki hissed. She turned back to Exisal. “Get out here, Ouma. Show yourself.” Shuichi wasn’t even sure what the next step was going to be. He had done his part of swinging the vote around. Kaito was going to hop out of the Exisal and prove everyone wrong and Kaito and Kokichi’s plan of making Monokuma decide the wrong culprit was going to succeed. Their plan to ruin the killing game was going to succeed.

“Yeah, get out of there, Ouma! Don’t make me make you come out, my MP’s fully restored now!”

“Ouma-kun, show yourself!”

“O-Ouma-kun, you can’t hide anymore!”

“Momota-kun, please,” Shuichi whispered. _I did what you needed me to do. Please._

The top of the Exisal creaked open. _He_ popped out. He stood over everyone, standing with one foot on the edge of the robot with an elbow resting against the knee. “Fine, fine, here I am! Good job, everyone, you all got it wrong~! _Now_ I can finally say it with feeling: congratulations, the killing is officially over—officially!!”

“O-Ouma-kun…?” Shuichi breathed out. He couldn’t even look at him. It was supposed to be Kaito. He genuinely believed that it was Kaito. That was the conclusion they all worked so hard to reach, that _Shuichi_ had worked so hard to reach. That Kokichi and Kaito wanted to disrupt the killing game. That Kokichi took advantage of Maki’s attack and turned it around to conduct a scheme in which he died by Kaito’s hands and no one would know – not even Monokuma or the mastermind. And it was all supposed to end with Monokuma voting for Kokichi and Kaito coming out of the Exisal to declare him wrong. Not this. How could Shuichi be wrong? His existence had been cursed with always being right, no matter how wrong he wanted to be.

“What do you mean the killing game’s over ‘officially’?!” Himiko yelled.

“I _mean_ that the culprit is unknown! Even _I_ don’t know who it is!” Kokichi leaned down but he stayed inside of the Exisal. He was level with Monokuma’s throne. “Because, you see, when I did the switcheroo, Momota-chan started coughing really, really, really bad. Like, _really_ bad. Like, choking on blood bad. So I figured that it was too late for him and brought the press down.” He shrugged like it was nothing. “Now it’s even more of a mystery! I don’t know if Momota-chan died from himself, from Harukawa-chan’s poison, or from the press. That’s the _real_ unsolvable crime—I don’t know, and none of you have a way of knowing either! And, if Monokuma-chan guesses the culprit wrong, you know what that means?” No one answered his “question.” “It means that there’s no more killing game! There can’t be a killing game if no one knows the answers!”

“Ooh,” Monokuma brought his paw up to his permanent semi-grin. “So are you saying that you’re the killer?”

“N~ope! I’m saying that it’s impossible to know who the killer is!”

“Oh. I see, I see… So you’re saying you’re _not_ the killer?”

“Geez, how many times do I have to repeat myself? You got stuffing in your ears, bear?”

“Nope, I hear ya loud and clear! You’re not saying you’re the killer, but everybody already voted for you. So you know what that means? And I’m only using your line of logic here.” Monokuma’s entire body shook as he erupted with laughter. “ _Everyone voted wrong_! It took until the Class of 3000, but I’m finally doing a group execution! I’ve never felt so excited in my entire existence!”

“How can you execute everyone if you don’t even know whether or not they’re wrong?”

“Because, according to what you’re saying, you only have the _possibility_ of being the killer. Sooo, technically I didn’t vote wrong and technically everyone else voted wrong.”

“Okay, let’s try this again.” Kokichi even stomped his foot against the Exisal for emphasis. “Unsolvable murder. Unknown culprit. No. More. Killing. Game. We. Win. You. Lose.”

“Isn’t your defense kinda weak? Obviously everyone figured out that the plan was to do that little switcheroo but because of Momota-kun’s alleged ‘cough’ it didn’t work out. If we think about it like that then either you brought the press down before Momota-kun could die from his illness or Harukawa-san’s poison or Momota-kun died before the press went down and you just crushed him to get us all in this mumbo jumbo hotpot about ‘ending’ this _never-ending_ killing game. But you know what, I’m feeling generous because you’ve actually piqued my interest, so,” Monokuma’s eye beamed red, “we can go back on my vote, if you want to, Ouma-kun. If we pick that first scenario, then that means that my vote is right, everyone else’s votes are right, you _are_ the culprit and you’ll receive punishment! Or we can go with that second scenario that you’re insisting on sticking to and then _everyone_ can get executed because the vote is wrong. How about that?”

Of course that didn’t sit well with anyone. Was it ironic that their loudest and most violent argument would initiate when more than half of them were gone?

Everyone’s shouts and yells and cries and screams of desperation reverberated off of the courtroom’s walls. It was a feral show for survival that easily dethroned Kirumi’s screams of refusal before she ran into her execution. Was the same thing going to happen to them now? Were they going to be dragged away kicking and screaming like so many people of the past have?

Shuichi was the only one silent and still standing by his podium as the debacle unfolded. It seemed like the ways things were heading would either result in Kokichi admitting to having to killed Kaito and his execution or Kokichi admitting that Kaito had died from another method and everyone else was executed. But Kokichi and Monokuma were stubborn souls, and Kaito was too – even from the grave, and Shuichi could see their argument dragging on until the end of time. Still, Shuichi was going to trust Kokichi. He wouldn’t have revealed himself from the Exisal if he wasn’t confident.

Trusting him was the only thing that Shuichi could do.

“Saihara.” Shuichi jumped and searched for the source of the voice through the commotion. Maki was the only one turned away from Monokuma and Kokichi and was giving him a look that could kill a thousand times over. “You have no right to shut your mouth all of a sudden. You’re the one who told us all to trust you and vote this way.”

“H-Harukawa-san, what do you want me to say?”

“What type of stupid question is that? You said that you’ve never been wrong before. _Prove it_. Did we make the right decision?” Shuichi looked up. Kokichi was still standing on top of the Exisal, going at it full force with Monokuma. His face was flushed with fury, his hair was sleeked with sweat from being cooped up in the Exisal for so long, the veins in his neck were strained, and without his jacket the bloodstain on the sleeve of his shirt was on full display. That sight gave Shuichi his answer.

“We made the right decision.”

Kokichi was fighting tooth and nail to end the killing game right in front of everyone. A contradiction was never so welcomed in Shuichi’s life. He hated it but he would take it a million times over Kokichi claiming that he was the mastermind. It validated the conversation they had a few days ago before Kokichi had disappeared prior to revealing that he was the “mastermind” as the truth: Kokichi wanted to end the killing game and he didn’t want to die.

“IT’S FINAL.” Shuichi had never heard Monokuma shriek or shake before. “It’s obvious that you didn’t kill Momota-kun! I’m revoking my vote towards you and the group execution’s starting—now!” He brought out his gavel and the button that commenced executions.

“You can’t revoke your vote!” Kokichi yelled back. “If you won’t let everyone else revoke their votes, then you can’t either! What happened to being ‘fair’? Being fair is accepting the fact that you don’t know whether or not Harukawa-chan or Momota-chan’s illness is the culprit!”

“Hm? You didn’t say your own name there.” Monokuma withdrew his mallet. “Am I finally getting a confession? Because—really, really, really—everyone else would be okie-dokie except you if I do! I’m not ending the killing game because of some shaky testimony.”

“There’s no such thing as only having two decisions. We are taking the third option here. Both of the votes—the gamemaster’s and the players’—are wrong and that’s just the way things are. Game over. Check. Mate. I’ve never lost a game before and now is no exception.”

“I’m happy to welcome you to your first loss then! Let’s get this thing rolling!!” He waved his gavel above his head. “Iiiit’s punishment time for Yumeno Himiko the Ultimate Magician, Harukawa Maki the Ultimate Assassin, K1-B0 the Ultimate Robot, Shirogane Tsumugi the Ultimate Cosplayer, Saihara Shuich—!”

“…Stop.”

“Ooh?” Monokuma cocked his head. “Stop what?”

“I guess the jig is up.” His shoulders were heaving and his voice was slightly hoarse. “The least I can do is be rational and cause four deaths instead of eight, huh?”

“So, I’m finally getting a confession?”

“Yeah, sure… Momota-chan was coughing so he was obviously still alive when I put the press down on him.”

“So, so, so,” Monokuma twirled the gavel around, “you’re finally giving up?”

“No, he’s not!” They both turned to Shuichi. The yell had ripped out of him out of nowhere, like when he had screamed for Kirumi to run away from her execution. Kokichi’s face fell. In a lower voice, Shuichi repeated himself. “No, he’s not. Don’t give up, Ouma-kun.”

“Hey, Saihara-chan, can you get me down from here?” Kokichi reached down in the seat of the Exisal, pulled out a few things, and held them to his chest. Shuichi stepped down from his podium and walked around all of the other podiums – some blocked his view of Kokichi and replaced it with a portrait of one of his fallen friends. The Exisal loomed above Shuichi. “Here I come!” Kokichi jumped down and Shuichi barely caught him. When he set him down to the ground, Kokichi shoved what he had pulled out of the Exisal to his chest. It was an Electrobomb and a notebook. Scrawled across the cover of the notebook were the words “TOP SECRET – FOR SAIHARA-CHAN’S EYES ONLY.” “Welp, I guess I failed. It’s been a fun game while it lasted though.” He didn’t even look at Shuichi. He tried to walk over to Monokuma. Shuichi dropped the notebook and the bomb and grabbed Kokichi’s arm (thankfully his unhurt one).

“What are you doing?”

“H-Huh?”

Shuichi tightened his grip on Kokichi’s wrist. “Why are you giving up? Y-You didn’t just say that you didn’t want to sacrifice any of us but that you wanted to end the killing game and that you didn’t want to die either too.”

“Oh, yeah? I said that?” Kokichi turned away from Monokuma, away from everyone else. “I… feel like I should do something sappy like apologize or something right now. But I don’t know how to, so I’m not. And… you’re kinda smart sometimes, so you’ll solve the mystery of the Academy and end the killing game no problemo, Saihara-chan. Amami-chan tried, Akamatsu-chan tried, Momota-chan tried, I tried, but fifth time’s the charm, right?” Kokichi suddenly tossed his head back and looked at Maki. “Hey, Harukawa-chan, get well soon.”

“Are you mocking me?” Shuichi stood in between them. “Saihara, move.”

“You, um, _did_ say that you were planning to kill him earlier. I-I can’t let that happen.” _Maki couldn’t touch Kokichi. Monokuma couldn’t touch him. No one could._ “Ouma-kun, if you’re lying right now about being the culprit just because you want to save everyone… you don’t have to do that. I’ll stand by you, I’ll defend you.”

Kokichi froze. His nose twitched – the indicator of a million different expressions. He could’ve forced himself to cry, drawn his features down into a pout, furrow his eyebrows in anger, but he didn’t. He stood there frozen, eyes focused on Shuichi’s hand for a good minute before murmuring, “I can’t risk it. And that’s why I hate you, you know?”

“W-What?”

“You heard me.” His eyes moved up to his shoulder. “I said I hate Saihara-chan. If he wasn’t here then I would risk it but I _can’t_. Isn’t this funny?” Kokichi laughed. “It’s funny how before every other execution, everybody would talk forever and ever until Monokuma cuts us off, but now nobody has anything to say.” He turned to everyone still gathered around Monokuma’s throne. “What, nobody has anything to say? C’mon, you guys really liked talking before!” _He’s scared_ , Shuichi thought. _He’s trying to drag this out_. Shuichi moved his grip from Kokichi’s wrist to his fingers, and Kokichi tightened his grasp in return. He could feel the other’s hand tremble. Shuichi took it as his opportunity to think. Thinking was the one thing that Shuichi could do well. Things couldn’t just end with Kokichi’s execution or everyone’s execution or _anyone else dying_.

“I have something to say then,” Maki said. Her feet stayed rooted in the same spot. At least she wasn’t coming after Kokichi anymore (for now). “I can’t believe that Momota is dead. You should’ve given him the antidote beforehand and let yourself get crushed underneath that press. You should’ve been the one who died.”

“Well… Obviously I couldn’t have because then Momota-chan wouldn’t have had a reason to work with me, you know?”

“You…” Himiko looked down. “You’ve hurt Momota and Gonta… Do you just—I mean, I didn’t want to believe it when you said that you enjoyed seeing us suffer because Saihara didn’t believe it but… Do you just really not care about any of us, Ouma?”

“Goddammit!” Kokichi’s hand shook even harder. “I made this entire plan _because_ I care about everyone! When are you all going to get that through your thick skulls? If I didn’t care I wouldn’t be losing my voice yelling at Monokuma or taking this fucking execution ultimatum—!”

“You must not care about Saihara.” Maki crossed her arms. “Because when you were lying about being the mastermind and giving that entire unnecessary speech and Saihara fainted, you pillaged that key to the Exisal hangar off his body like it was nothing.”

“Weeell, _obviously_ a big, bad, evil mastermind doesn’t care about other people. It didn’t matter if I felt one way or another about it. I had to act like I didn’t care. How’s this: when everybody was having their little two-day depression session, I checked up on everyone before Harukawa-chan started watching the hangar. Plus that’s what I wanted too actually. I wanted everybody to be too broken to keep on killing and to keep on wanting to escape. After I saw the secret of the outside world and I came up with my plan, I figured that I would piss the real mastermind off so I came up with a backup plan just in case. And then the backup plan for my backup plan was why I got that video camera. So we’re on, like, Plan D right now. Or should I say that we’re on Plan E? Because Plan D was if I ended up living instead of dying and Plan E is if I lived instead of died but ended up dying anyway… Anymore questions?”

The peanut gallery remained silent.

“Well, I guess I have to say my last regards. You guys better not go back on your usual promise of ‘ooooh, boohoo, let’s all keep Akamatsu-chan’s promise and stop the killing’ and then start killing anyway, because I’m going to be seriously pissed off if you do. It’s the most annoying shit in the world. Saihara-chan said this before: this is a deadly cycle and you guys need to break out of it. And Saihara-chan, you need to be more confident, because now you won’t be carrying me around as baggage anymore—” Kokichi allowed himself to look at Shuichi’s face. He was crying. Saihara Shuichi crying was forever the worst thing that the world had to offer.

“Ouma-kun, I-I… I’m trying to think of a solution to this. Don’t give up.”

“Stop. There isn’t one unless you want to die instead and that’s not an option, so…”

“What if we just refuse? I know you didn’t kill Momota-kun… right?”

“It… doesn’t matter. The truth right now is that I killed Momota-chan and I failed to get away with it and everyone voted for the right person and Monokuma picked the right culprit.”

Silence.

“Hm, nobody’s chatty?” Monokuma tapped his gavel against his paw. “Whatever. Enough silence! I’m still pissed off from all that arguing earlier. Anyways, I have reserved a _very_ extra super-duper special punishment for Ouma Kokichi, the Ultimate Chessmaster!”

“‘Ultimate Chessmaster,’” Maki repeated. “Hypocritical piece of shit—so it’s fine for you to hide your own talent?”

Kokichi laughed again. “Hey, remember Iruma-chan? She was really, really funny because she would always stupidly predict things correctly. Like when she guessed that Tojo-chan and Shinguji-chan were the Blackened at the start of their trials and when she said that I was the ‘supreme leader of an ultra-virgin squad of chess playing geeks.’ So, I mean, it’s half and half the truth. I _am_ technically a supreme leader.”

“Why did you hide that?”

“Well, _duh_. Being the Ultimate Supreme Leader of some type of unknown super evil, super-secret group is a lot less boring sounding than being the leader of a bunch of orphans playing chess for money. C’mon, Harukawa-chan, you know a lot about being an orphan too. I guess we’re more alike than you think after all!” Maki uncrossed her arms and flung them at her sides. “Nothing else to say, Harukawa-chan?” She shook her head. “Welp… Guess that means it’s my time to go then.”

“N-No!” Shuichi pulled Kokichi back again. “I-I can’t accept this! We have to do something. Just tell me the truth, Ouma-kun, _please_. I know you didn’t kill Momota-kun, we can’t just give up!”

“Geez, am I a broken record? If I didn’t kill Momota-chan all of you are going to die. And just because I’m going to be executed doesn’t mean I’m giving up. Because it’s only going to be the beginning, I’ll never give up, the sun never sets on Ouma Kokichi’s empire—yadda, yadda, yadda—you know, all the cheesy stuff people say before they die. Bye-bye, friends!” Kokichi waved his free hand to everyone. “And Saihara-chan,” Kokichi reached up and patted his cheek, “stop crying. You’re really ugly when you cry, you know.”

“T-There…” Shuichi could barely speak. _God_. “There _has_ to be another way. There has to be a better way. I-It doesn’t have to be taken this far.” Kokichi prodded his finger against his lips. _And Kokichi always pointed it out whenever he smiled like that, and always poked his finger against his lips to stop them from quivering. But Kokichi wasn’t there. Kokichi wasn’t anywhere anymore except underneath the press._ “O-Ouma-kun, please…”

“Hey, I would say ‘good luck’ or something, but I know you can handle this. You’re the only person out of all these idiots that I think can do this, so,” Kokichi moved his hand down to his shoulder and looked him in the eye – _finally_ , “do your best, Saihara-chan!” He hugged him. Shuichi’s arms immediately caged him in. “Is it too cheesy to ask for one last kiss no—?” Shuichi didn’t even let him finish his sentence. His lips more so smashed against his, but it was everything Kokichi wanted. There was already a tug on the back of his shirt when their lips parted.

“It’s execution time! Break it up, kids! I usually reserve the claw for the first execution, but you’re an insufferable little brat, aren’t ya?” Kokichi was being dragged away. _No, no, no_. Shuichi could feel him leaving his arms.

Kokichi grinned. It was the widest smile that he had ever given during their time together. “And one last thing, to whoever’s toying with our lives right now and to anyone that’s watching: get ready to watch the most amazing show of all time!” He laughed. His fingers were just losing their grip with Shuichi’s. His faux persona dropped. “Hey, I wasn’t boring, right… Shuichi-chan?”

Shuichi shook his head as fast as he could. “No! Y-You’re unforgettable, Oum— _Kokichi_!” Kaede had been taken away from him like this, with a chain around her neck and her hand reaching out to him but she was yanked away before their fingertips could even touch.

 _Not again_.

Shuichi jumped up and held on to Kokichi’s arm. Kokichi gasped but he held back on to Shuichi’s. Monokuma muttered something but Shuichi ignored him. He could feel his feet beginning to leave the ground, but he still held on.

“Dammit, Saihara.”

Maki was the first to run up and grab Shuichi’s leg. Then Kiibo followed, then Himiko, then Tsumugi. But their efforts were fruitless. The chain pulled Kokichi up higher and higher, Kokichi squeezed Shuichi’s arm before he released his own grip on him, and Shuichi lost his when the ceiling finally siphoned around Kokichi, and they all tumbled in a pile on the floor, and the monitors that played the executions came down all around them and Shuichi curled into a fetal position on the ground and covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut.

He remembered watching Kaede and Kirumi’s executions in frozen horror. He remembered closing his eyes during Gonta’s before the fatal blow could be laid. He couldn’t watch this. He couldn’t _hear_ this. _This wasn’t happening_.

The ground was shaking. The impact was similar to an earthquake. Shuichi refused to look, not even a peep. He heard a few muffled shouts. Then there was a tap on his shoulder. He shook his head and curled in to himself. Another tap. Then a hand yanking his hand away from his ear.

“It’s over.” Shuichi slowly opened his eyes. He could see the toes of Maki’s boots in front of him. He could see Kiibo on the ground and Himiko and Tsumugi fawning over him. He could see rubble everywhere and a hole in the middle of the courtroom.

“Kiibo-kun, are you okay?!” Tsumugi was helping Kiibo up.

“Yeah, that rock knocked your antenna right off! I don’t think I have a spell that can reattach it…”

“It’s okay, I’m fine.” Kiibo’s eyes had darkened and his body was rigid. He didn’t look fine at all. Then again, none of them did. “I don’t think I’m the one who should be asked that question though.” His eyes were zoned in on Shuichi and Maki. Tsumugi and Himiko turned to them too.

“Don’t worry about me,” Maki hissed. Shuichi slowly got to his feet. Kokichi and Kaito were _gone_ like it was nothing. Kaede was gone. Gonta was gone. So many of them were just _gone_.

Just out of reach of the rubble were the notebook and the Electrobomb that Kokichi had given him. Shuichi’s mind went on autopilot as he retrieved them. He held them to his chest just like Kokichi had before he helped him out of the Exisal. He traced his finger over the cover of the notebook. Kokichi must have written that it was for his eyes only recently. His penmanship was so harsh and rough and…

“I’m sorry.” Shuichi still held his back to everyone. He should have been bowing and groveling down on the ground, but if he got down on the ground again he knew that he wouldn’t be able to get up again. “I’m sorry on behalf of Momota-kun and Ouma-kun for causing all of this grief. But… Ouma-kun is right. It took us too long to finally reach the beginning.”

“Saihara-kun… You don’t have to apologize for that.” Shuichi didn’t even have a response for Tsumugi.

Monokuma’s laugh echoed throughout the courtroom. “That was extreme!! I don’t think I’ve ever put a hole in the courtroom before! Looks like the sun has finally set on Ouma Kokichi’s empire! See that, I _always_ get my way! Despair upon despair upon despair! It’s the deadly cycle that _nobody_ can get out off!” He disappeared then reappeared on his throne again. “Aw, people always get so sad and grieve whenever they lose someone. If only there was a way to recycle lives, then maybe people wouldn’t feel sad anymore whenever they lose someone and then there’d be hope—but _nope_ , the world doesn’t work like that! Right, kids?” The Monokubs popped up out of nowhere, all singing their agreement. The robots merrily laughed together in tandem. “See that? I’m back on track. I got plenty of backups, just like with you guys! Even though you can’t all be recycled in the same way that my precious children can, it’s just a matter of looking for someone to participate in the game. You’re not recyclable, but you are replaceable! Right, kids?” They all laughed again in agreement.

_You’re not recyclable, but you are replaceable!_

_And one last thing, to whoever’s toying with our lives right now and to anyone that’s watching: get ready to watch the most amazing show of all time!_

“Let’s go,” Maki said. Shuichi was only a step behind her. Kiibo was in tow, then Himiko, then Tsumugi. The Monokubs suddenly jumped in front of the exit. “Get out of our way—”

“Not so fast!” The pink Monokub said. “Daddy has something to show you all!”

“That’s right!” Monokuma took out a Flashback Light, one bigger than the others before, and turned it on. “This one’s special too because it’s going to make you all remember that despair is the only option. …Huh? You guys have nothing to say again?”

“Tough crowd,” the yellow Monokub muttered.

“Get out of the way.”

“Aah!” The pink Monokub screamed. “I don’t think that detective guy is supposed to be so scary! Retreat!!” They all disappeared at once.

> ix. post-mortem: _analysis of a game after it has concluded, typically by one or both players and sometimes with spectators contributing as well. a player who has just lost the game thanks to a dubious move has the chance to win the post-mortem by finding a better one._

Three times is conspiracy. Thrice is enemy action.

Enemy action was what exactly was going on. The mastermind wasn’t going to just let Kokichi get away with it. He knew that much. Being crazy prepared was going to work in his favor. He had figured that Maki was probably concussed after he hit her with the Exisal. (He really hadn’t meant to hit her in the head, but she had come at him way too fast.) And judging from the way that she wobbled when she came out of the Exisal now, he was right. She was moving worse than he had after he had fallen through the floorboards. (He hated the fact that he had been debating how hurt she was while guarding Kaito – the girl had strangled him twice in front of an audience, she didn’t deserve his concern.)

Kokichi’s backup plan sprang into action the moment he dug out the video camera from its pocket and activated the flash option and shined it right in Maki’s eyes. One thing about concussions was that it made people sensitive to light. He had to give himself a point for cleverness for that one and a thank you to whoever designed the video camera that it came with a flash option in the first place.

As expected, her aim with the crossbow was sent off kilter and the arrow went flying somewhere else. It didn’t matter where, just as long as it wasn’t in Kokichi.

She wasn’t giving up though.

Hand-to-hand combat was not Kokichi’s strength. He preferred to get the jump on someone and then run away before they could fight back. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to run away in the hangar. And Maki was getting the upper hand. A concussion probably wouldn’t do too much to stop a really mad, really skilled assassin.

Things went flying in between them. He managed to knock her crossbow away. She managed to knock the camera away and throw him to the ground. The Electrobombs and remote flew out of his pocket. _The remote_. He tried to kick her off and crawl his way to the remote, but – as expected – she was unrelenting.

He could hear her saying something corny overhead like “any last words” or “tell me the truth” or something. It didn’t matter. Kaito was already separating them, thank God. But then he gasped. And then Maki ran away. And then Kokichi saw the poisoned arrow stuck into his hand. And then he forced himself to move on to the next plan.

One of the Electrobombs had been activated. _Shit_. They only had two hours then. The last bomb was reserved for Shuichi. He reminded Kaito that they had to work fast. He teetered the antidote in front of his face as a more solid reminder. They got to work. Everything was going smoothly. Everything was going according to plan. But of course life had to fuck things over. It was a reoccurring theme for Ouma Kokichi, he should’ve been used to it by now.

Kaito was coughing up a violent storm when he lied on the press. Kokichi was forced to stop the press and press pause on the camera a little earlier than he would have liked. “Hey, Momota-chan we can’t—” Kaito wasn’t moving. _Kaito wasn’t moving. Kaito wasn’t moving. Kaito wasn—_. Kokichi couldn’t panic. He was on a time crunch. He pressed play again on the camera (his hands were definitely not shaking) and started the press again, and let it fall all the way down. (He did wish though that he had looked away or covered his ears.)

He just had to pretend like he was Kaito pretending to be himself. It was fine. He took off his jacket and shoved it down the toilet. Completely fine. He picked up the last Electrobomb and the remote. Totally fine. He took his notebook from his pocket and held it to his chest after he jumped inside of the Exisal. Everything was going to work out. It had to.

⁂

It was right when Shuichi had finished the last page of Kokichi’s notebook. He picked up the Electrobomb (he had activated it before he started reading – it was for “his eyes only” for a reason) and tossed it aside before he stood up. The ground was shaking. It was shaking harder than it had in the courtroom.

Shuichi stepped outside of the dormitory. Kiibo was flying through the air and shooting at the Academy.

⁂

Shuichi tried to stop Tsumugi’s words from ringing through his head. He needed to focus on helping Himiko get out of the rubble.

_“At first I thought I went a little overboard when I had first started writing out this season.”_

“Are you alright, Yumeno-san?”

 _“I mean,_ two _unrequited romances with Chabashira-san and Yumeno-san and with Harukawa-san and Momota-kun_ and _one relationship with Saihara-kun and Ouma-kun? I was thinking, ‘too much romance—there hasn’t been so much romance in the other seasons!’ but the fans were eating it up! It was like they couldn’t get enough!”_

“As fine as I’ll ever be, I guess…”

_“That’s right! None of your friendships or relationships are real! And you can thank me for that, you guys! Did I do a good job?”_

“Look,” Maki pointed forward, “the exit is right there.”

_“It was all Ultimate Fiction!”_

“Can we just… leave?” Himiko looked up at the two of them. Maki looked at Shuichi. He wasn’t sure if she was looking for confirmation from him or not, but he did know one thing.

_“Did I do a good job being a cosplay copycat?”_

“We won’t know the answers until we do.”

And so they finally stepped out of the Academy and into the darkness.

Darkness. No. That wasn’t right.

A light bulb blinked on overhead. “Yumeno-san? Harukawa-san?” Shuichi received no answer. He was inside of a dingy white room with a single plastic chair in the center facing a camera implanted into the wall.

“Number one-five-four,” a voice from out of nowhere called out, “are you ready for the _Danganronpa_ post-interview? Take a seat.” Shuichi took a slow step in front of the chair but didn’t sit down. The voice didn’t sound robotic like Monokuma and the Monokubs’ had. It sounded similar to how “Kaito’s” voice was when it came out the Exisal. It was obvious that whoever was behind it was using some sort of voice changing program. “These interviews are mandatory after the game has been completed.” Shuichi went around the chair and took a seat then. He looked directly ahead into the camera. Its lens was fogged up and didn’t seem focused.

“Have you enjoyed your experience?” Shuichi didn’t answer. “What did you think about all the twists and turns this season?” No answer. “Okay then. What about your relationship with Ouma Kokichi?” Shuichi had to smile at that. It was a small, sad smile – the kind that he knew Kokichi hated – but he had to. He swore that he heard the “interviewer” make a sound of surprise. He reached into his pocket and pulled out Kokichi’s notebook. He carefully unwrapped Kokichi’s scarf from around it before he opened it up to the page marked with Kaede’s music note hairpin.

“Kokichi wrote that he had a nightmare about all of us in school. And from the way that he described the school it perfectly fits the description of the new Hope’s Peak Academy—and Kokichi had never seen the Flashback Light saying that we were students there and he had never been in his Research Lab and read the book on the ‘history’ of Hope’s Peak either. Otherwise he would’ve known about Enoshima Junko and the Remnants of Despair whenever we brought it up during the class trial.” The voice didn’t say anything back.

Maybe there was a promise that everything was not so fictional after all. The word “believe” had “lie” in it for a reason. Like Kokichi always said, there were a million possibilities to lies but only one definite truth. Once the lies were properly sifted through then the truth could always be reached.

There were four ways to win a game of chess: by checkmate, by the other player resigning, by the other player exceeding the time limit, or by the other player being forfeited by the tournament director. And he, the Ultimate Detective, and Kokichi, the Ultimate Supreme Leader and Chessmaster, had won against Tsumugi in all four ways at once.

Even if he was gone, Ouma Kokichi never lost.

“I believe that there’s a better truth out there. Because everyone who died—Amami-kun, Akamatsu-san, Hoshi-kun, Tojo-san, Angie-san, Chabashira-san, Shinguji-kun, Iruma-san, Gonta-kun, Momota-kun, Kokichi, and Kiibo-kun—they all deserve better than this. And this,” Shuichi wrapped the notebook up in the scarf again before returning it to his pocket, “is just another one of Shirogane’s lies. I know it.” He stood up from the seat. The voice still didn’t say anything. “The truth,” he reached forward, “is just behind this,” and smashed the lenses of the camera, pulled it away from the wall, and looked beyond it.


End file.
